What is realism?

Realism is when people think things are exactly how they seem, and not because of something special or hidden.

Imagine you have a red ball in your hand. You look at it, and it’s just a regular ball, round, bumpy, and red. That’s realism. It means you believe the ball is what it looks like, without thinking there's some kind of secret inside it that makes it special.

If you draw a picture of a cat on paper, someone who believes in realism would say, "That looks like a real cat!" They don’t think the drawing has any magic or hidden powers, they just see what’s right there on the page.

Sometimes people imagine things are different from how they look. But with realism, you're like a detective who checks everything out before believing something is true. You touch it, you look at it closely, and then you say, "Yep, that’s exactly what it is."