Acting versus lying essay
From the start of life we are taught not to lie. As life progresses we learn that honesty may not be the best policy. That is, if getting ahead in life is important. This idea is taught in many ways, one is by acting. Every time an actor/actress is on a set they portray a different character this is evidence that lying is fine as long as it is acting. Movies and plays support that maybe lying is not always bad. The thing is are the different or are they the same? Are we acting when we are lying? Or are we lying when we are acting?
Lying is something that happens on a regular basis. Lying may be as common as a second nature to us. When caught in the act of lying we may try to cover it up. Either changing the whole story or using words that let others know that it was only for play or how sorry we are. On the other hand acting is done just as often as lying. The only difference is actors often do not make up their own lies in movies or plays. They have someone else do it. When the actor/actress is not believable they do not just pretend that they did not say it. This is when the script is changed to make it more believable.
When a person is lying there is often a sequence that is followed. They will start off with little “white lies” to see how much they can get away with. The more that they get away with, then the more in depth the lies will get. People tend to become very good at telling a lie. Making it hard to tell which are true and what a flat out lie is. A story is how these lies become alive. As actors/actresses convey a story throughout a movie, this rarely has anything to do of how the actor/actress really is. Lies that you can see characters share with each other in a movie are lies within lies. They set up a story and make it as real as possible but often it is the furthest from the truth.
Feeling comes into play when lying. A good liar will know how their feelings should be brought in. when something is tough the occasional tear will appear. If they are not so good they will often be caught because of them trying to force feelings out.
The article, “Is Lying Bad for Us,” accurately describes the intentions of a “liar.” The author says, “Though liars do not tell the truth, they care about it, while the bullshitter does not even care about the truth and seeks merely to impress” (Gunderman). This statement proves that lying should not be viewed as out of the ordinary, or unacceptable, and that liars should not be viewed as bad people. Lying can be shown as a way of protecting or caring
When confronted with a problem, why does the human brain default to lying? Dishonesty is never a solution, although it may seem like the best option in the spur of a moment. My grandma always gave the example of her youth: she avoided and deceived her friend’s sister because the little girl riled everyone. Come to find out, the sister passed the following month due to an illness. I could never imagine the guilt she experienced. Nevertheless, everyone has been deceitful before and many characters were in the tragedy, The Crucible, by playwright Arthur Miller. Reasons for lying are understandable, but most people will admit that mendacity has only caused pain. Lying’s outcome is never positive: it may seem like a good option, for falsehood can save a person’s life, benefit someone, and it eases stress, but these are all transitory.
In “The Ways We Lie” by Stephanie Ericsson, the author uses her knowledge to talk about the different ways of lies and how those lies affect the liar, as well as the people who had been told lies. According to the author’s essay, there are 10 types of lies that people encounter every single day: the White Lie, Facades, Ignoring the Plain Facts, Deflecting, Omission, Stereotypes and Cliches, Groupthink, Out-and-Out Lies, Dismissal, and Delusion. Throughout the essay, it is connoted that people are lying in various ways even though they are not intended to. I had been taught that lying is a bad habit. According to Ericsson, there are many types of lie and I did three of them in my life: the White Lie, Omission, and Out-and-Out Lies; however, I can defend my lies for good purposes.
Lying makes things complicated in ways that it can help or not in your situation. In the movie, “The Hunger Games,” Katniss and her teammate Peeta pretend that they’re in love with each other so they would get more sponsors and possibly be the two people to win. After they find out that there could only be one winner, Katniss pulled out poisonous berries so both Peeta and her could eat them to trick the capitol on letting them both win and go home. The lie worked, and they were both pronounced to be the victors. In the story Scarlet Letter, lying was also going on to fit into society. The character Hester was pregnant while she was single; so society judged her for it. While this was happening the text revealed that Dimmesdale, the pastor, was actually the father of the baby, but due to the fact he was the “holy man” he couldn’t say it. Hester, trying to protect Dimmesdale from the judgment of the crowd, wouldn’t say who was the dad, she kept lying to the society so it wouldn’t hurt more people. Society can make us lie to fit in or outsmart each other to get ahead of
First and foremost, the act of lying can cause a lot of wrongs and damage. For example, Abigail Williams told her uncle, Reverend Parris, that all the girls including herself were only dancing in the woods. This is not truthful because in the beginning of act 1 in the Crucible it was stated that Reverend Parris saw Tituba waving her hands over the fire mumbling gibberish while the girls danced and someone ran through the trees naked. Knowing this it had also caused a lot in the village due to the belief of witchcraft. Abigail denied it but told the girls that if anyone questioned them to keep hush and claim that they had only danced. “Listen
The people who claim that they do not lie are probably lying when they say it. Whether it is to deceive authority or just to play a joke on a friend, it is part of human nature to lie. In the novel The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jay Gatsby takes on a character of wealth and luxury. Gatsby wants to win back his love interest from five years ago, so he secretly becomes wealthy through owning an illegal drug business, using his abundance of money to impress her. In contrast, in Tobias Wolff’s “The Liar,” he tells a story of teenage James as he lies about his life to appear more fascinating. He lies not because he wants to, but because it comes naturally to him. Both stories convey people struggling to find the purpose of their
Stephanie Ericsson’s The Ways We Lie, analyzes and reflects on how lying has simply become the norm in our society. We all lie, there is not one person in the world that does not lie. Most people lie because they are afraid of telling the truth, however what they do not know is telling a lie can lead them in the wrong direction because many things can happen when lying to a person. The person can find out when everything unravels that person will not have trust in you and you would be known as a liar. To every action there is a consequence, so why not deal with just one consequence when telling the
Lying doesn’t only hurt the relationship, but it mostly hurts the person who is being lied to, emotionally.
To begin with, the majority of people believe that lying is okay when used for protection or protecting others. In the article entitled “It’s the truth: Americans Conflicted About Lying” ethics columnist Randy Cohen states, “ Not only is lying justified, it is sometimes a moral duty.” This shows how if a person is in a life or death situation you are going to lie to save them. This also shows that lying is
We lie all the time, lying is not something new to our culture. We lie to our parents, we lie to our friends, we even lie to our significant other, but why do we do it? There is not one set reason on why we lie but they can vary from an insignificant reason to something more nefarious. A good operational definition of a lie is “A lie is a false statement to a person or group made by another person or group who knows it is not the whole truth, intentionally.” (Freitas-Magalhães) We have been raised to know that lying is usually a bad thing, and it’s better to tell the truth, not to mention the circumstances get exponentially worse if you are caught lying. No one wants to be labeled as a liar, or untrustworthy. This may sound unorthodox but I personally think lying is perfectly fine; depending on the situation. If you have a prima-facie duty to be dishonest it’s perfectly acceptable. Ross says a prima facie duty or obligation is an actual duty. “One’s actual duty is what one ought to do all things considered.” (Carson) I’m not the only one who finds this too be true. Ross would also agree with me, He says “Lying is permissible or obligatory when the duty not to lie conflicts with a more important or equal important prima facie duty.” (Carson) As I was doing research on this topic I did read one extremely compelling argument on why we ought not to lie. Aristotle basically said a person who makes a defense for lying could never be trusted. (King.)
Lying is when you purposely tell someone something you believe or know is false. If you told someone something you thought was true, but then it ended up being a lie, you simply have just given false information. Lying is obviously not an ideal thing to do, but sometimes it may be necessary. Here are the four types of lies.
Actors form their illusions to entertain. They want the audience to be taken to a new time and place where they can enjoy themselves. Liars, on the other hand, lie for personal gain. They try to gain something, prevent themselves from losing something, or maybe just wish to spare another person’s feelings. Whatever the purpose, instead of trying to entertain and let the audience have fun, liars try to cover the eyes of their “audience” so that they are unable to see the whole
Can you remember the last time someone lied to you? Or how about the last time you lied to someone else? Did you ever stop and ask yourself why? There are so many different reasons that a person might lie. Maybe a lie about something to keep oneself out of trouble, or even a lie to impress other people. But either way there are always going to be serious consequences or effects of lying.
Liars have rumors spread around about how they lie all the time. Nobody wants to talk to them because they won't know if they are lying to them or not. They aren't trusted as much as people who don't lie. Liars never get very far in life and always have a reputation of lying. It's much better to tell the truth and have friends who trust them, rather than lying and having rumors spread around making no one like them.
You can tell a lot about a person by the way they dress, by the cars they drive, and by the people they associate themselves with. You can also learn a lot about a person by what they say, because their honesty, or lack-there-of, shows the type of person they are. When a person is forthright, it is easy to believe and trust the person; however, when the person has tendencies to be misleading or manipulative, the trust is not as evident. To lie, according to www.answers.com, means to present false or invalid information with the intent of deceiving or misleading another person. Choosing to lie to people is a self-dilemma that one has, and this act may alter the relations they have with the people they lie to. Some lie and completely change the information they are spreading, altering the story for some reason or another. Other people simply leave a couple of facts out, speaking carefully and holding back parts of the story for their own benefit or to make the listener think differently. It is a question as to whether either method is good, and what could happen by speaking in such ways to another person. In George Bernard Shaw’s play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Mrs. Warren is careful when she speaks to Vivie so she can keep parts of her life hidden from her daughter; by not stating all of the facts, one may wonder if Mrs. Warren is lying to Vivie, or simply leaving out information.