More Ricoeur, this time on death and narrative

As for death, do not the narratives provided by literature serve to soften the sting of anguish in the face of the unknown, of nothingness, by giving it in imagination the shape of this or that death, exemplary in one way or another? Thus fiction has a role to play in the apprenticeship of dying. The meditation on the Passion of Christ has accompanied in this way more than one believer to the last threshold.' Oneself as Another, p. 162

By 'fiction', Ricoeur isn't saying 'it's made up': rather, he is pointing to the literary features of the account.