Judith Viorst is an American journalist. Her essay “The Truth about Lying”, printed in Buscemi and Smith’s 75 Readings: An Anthology. In this essay, Viorst examines social, protective, peace-keeping and trust-keeping lies but doesn’t include lies of influence. Viorst opens her article by explaining social lies. She describes these as lies to avoid hurt, such as lying to a cousin by pretending to enjoy dinner. Judith believes they are necessary and acceptable; without them, relationships would be icky and short. By being honest and not telling white lies a person can come off harsh. Furthermore, Viorst thinks that not telling social lies is arrogant. Peace-keeping lies are designed to avoid arguments or irritation. Viorst says I tell these
She admits her struggles with lying as she once attempted to go a week without lying and described it to be “paralyzing.” She also explains how lies can sometimes have positive outcomes such as when the bank calls for her deposit. Without her lie the bank would have charged her $60 in over drafting fees. Ericsson attempts to justify her lies explaining that “there must be some merit to lying.” She makes a personal connection though the lies she tells on a daily basis. Her tone is colloquial yet informational, utilizing terms such as “we.” She explains that “We lie. We all do.” She points out the obvious reasons we lie and the effortless ways we can lie, “we exaggerate, we minimize, we avoid confrontation, we spare people’s feeling, we conveniently forget.” She asks questions, “how much do we tolerate before we become sick and tired of being sick and tired?” to create a conversational tone. In paragraphs 35 through 37, her tone shift from accepting to cynical as she begins to question the limits of lying and their
A Critique of “The Truth about Lying: Has Lying Gotten a Bad Rap” by Allison Kornet
In their essays both Buckley and Ericsson analyze the different ways we use lies to help and hurt our self in our every day lives, and how this effects American culture. Ericsson shows the way lies can , as she puts it, “ lubricate the daily machinery of living”(128). Buckley, on the other hand uses examples of lies as a way to deny himself; and do exactly the opposite of Ericsson. But they both show how we as Americans use lies these ways and others so much that most of us may not realize it.
The book We Were Liars by E Lockhart is about an extremely prestigious family called the Sinclairs. The Sinclair family consists of the grandfather, the grandmother, their three daughters, Carrie, Bess, and Penny, and their grandchildren, Johnny, Will, Mirren, Liberty, Taft, Bonnie, and Cadence. Every summer, the family goes to their summer island, off the coast of Massachusetts. Of the grandchildren, the ones that hang out the most are Johnny, Mirren, and Cadence. On summer eight, Gat, a friend of Johnny, began coming to the island. After Gat’s arrival, Johnny, Mirren, Cadence, and Gat were known as the Four Liars. After many summers later, Gat and Cadence strike up a romance between each other in summer
That, like unreliable narrators, individuals often ‘lie’ to themselves in order to cover up the actual
When initially asked about the morality of lying, it is easy for one to condemn it for being wrong or even corrupt. However, those asked are generally guilty of the crime on a daily basis. Lying is, unfortunately, a normal aspect of everyday life. In the essay “The Ways We Lie,” author Stephanie Ericsson makes note of the most common types of lies along with their consequences. By ordering the categories from least to most severe, she expresses the idea that lies enshroud our daily lives to the extent that we can no longer between fact and fiction. To fully bring this argument into perspective, Ericsson utilizes metaphor, rhetorical questions, and allusion.
portrays that a person should not lie, even when drastic consequences such as death threaten
Richard Gunderman asks the question, "Isn 't there something inherently wrong with lying, and “in his article” Is Lying Bad for Us?" Similarly, Stephanie Ericsson states, "Sure I lie, but it doesn 't hurt anything. Or does it?" in her essay, "The Ways We Lie.” Both Gunderman and Ericsson hold strong opinions in regards to lying and they appeal to their audience by incorporating personal experiences as well as references to answer the questions that so many long to confirm.
Let's say someone does not want to hurt their friends feelings, it would benefit both of them for lying. One friend does not have to break their other friend’s heart while the other friend does not have their heart broken. As Viorst uses a husband and a wife to prove her point one of the spouses of the couple says “She says she's being wise”. The spouse meant that his wife thought she was wise that she was saving herself and her mother hassle and pain because she was using a peace keeping lie. The people that do not want their feelings to be hurt lying would be useful to them, they would like to be lied to.
Are everyday rituals, such as, facades reflected as to being a lie? Simply preparing for a meeting or interview does not come off as lying, although another type of façade such as when someone asks, “Are you okay,” after a death of someone close to you, in reality it is a form of a lie, because you are not being honest. In Stephanie Erricsson’s article “The Ways We Lie,” she discusses many different types of lying, that most wouldn’t even consider. Ericsson claimed, “But façades can be destructive because they are used to seduce others into an illusion” (409). Depending how a façade is used, the outcome can be beneficial or damaging. There are facades that are used to cover up one’s true feelings, in order to protect an individual and then there is a type in which one puts on a mask to cover up how awful of a person they are. Charity, a former friend, deceived me with the qualities of everything she was not, my mom is a great example of when it comes to hiding when she is saddened. In this article “The Ways We Lie,” Stephanie Ericsson has a great point of view on the destructiveness of facades, although, it can very well be used in a good way just as much as in a bad way, in fact, like my protective mother, using facades for mine and my sisters own good and then a conniving friend using facades in
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
In “The Ways We Lie”, Ericsson describes the different types of lies: white lie, facades, ignoring
From the start Bhattacharjee immediately grabs the reader's attention with a narrative on history famous cases of deception. In the case of James Hogue otherwise known as Jay Huntsman or better yet Alexei Santana, a young man who “barely received any formal schooling. He had spent his adolescence almost entirely on his own, living outdoors in Utah, where he’d herded cattle, raised sheep, and read philosophy.”(36) One would assume that creating such intricate lie would be highly difficult to maintain and fallible to scrutiny, yet it became one of many charade that continued with none the wiser. Therefore, establishing a point of interest wherein the rest of the article further elaborates on the topic. From there several studies and lab experiments are reference by Bhattacharjee. In one study by Bella Depaulo, a social psychologist at The university of California, found that on average subjects lied“ one or two times a day.”(38)Therefore, demonstrating that to lie is an ingrained human habit that is done almost seamlessly on the daily. Next comes the personal accounts from Bhattacharjee that evoke a sense of relatability and to some extent nostalgia that makes the topic more personal for the readers.
People of wealth and stature are more likely to lie and deceive to get what they want, then people of middle and lower classes. The most common consensus for this is greed. Although greed applies to both lower and upper class, Studies conducted at the University of California, Berkeley showed that upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies, take valued goods from others, lie in a negotiation, cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize, and endorse unethical behavior at work, than were lower-class individuals. However the lower class individuals who almost never lied in the
What are lies? A lie is defined as follows: To make a statement that one knows to be false, especially with the intent to deceive. There are several ways that lies are told for instance, there are white lies, lies of omission, bold faced lies, and lies of exaggeration. No matter what type of lie that one chooses to tell many people believe that lies do more harm than good.