Liar's Paradox

“Nothing in this book is true.” If that’s the truth, it’s a lie and if that’s a lie, it’s the truth. It’s a truth that lies to us, and a lie that tells us the truth.

Why would Vonnegut choose to start a book off as such? Personally, I thought it was a great hook. It was not because he openly admitted to lying; for a work of fiction, that would be simply stating the obvious. Rather, it was the sheer absoluteness and certainty of the statement that poked at me. It made me curious, and immediately doubtful- an entire book cannot be written out of entire lies. Even when we read a fantasy novel like Harry Potter, we always run into “truths”; there is no way around it. So, what I got out of the statement was that there was perhaps more truth to the book than what would be obvious to a reader. Vonnegut set up the book so that a reader is immediately tempted to actively search for “truths” in the book that supposedly has none.

What is it about the idea of absolute lies that makes us so skeptical? What about absolute truths? I think I would be equally fascinated if a book opens saying, “Everything in this book is true.” Not only because the writer is already expecting the readers to doubt the facts in the book, which sets an immediate believe-it-or-not air about it, but also because I don’t think a book can really be entirely true. Even reporting a single incident is somewhat inherently biased because how we perceive an incident varies from one person to another. And then, the story again trickles through another filter of perception when a reader reads the writer’s report of the incident. So, is it ever possible to reach that unadulterated truth? Does it even exist?

I think in the end, it’s all just a mesh of truths and lies. But that doesn’t put me off (does that make me a Bokononist?). I think it keeps things interesting. Besides, what’s encouraging is that whether it is a “truth” or a “lie”, we do learn something new through each of them. Truth is one thing, reality is another.

*Image downloaded from:

http://www.unlearning101.com/fuhgetaboutit_the_art_of_/2011/03/you-can-embrace-ambiguity-true-or-false.html

Lies = Good

I’m very confused by Vonnegut’s logic in Cat’s Cradle. He characterizes science as a form of discovering truth, while he characterizes religion as a form of lies. Before the book even starts, he gives this negative depiction of religion (“Nothing in this book is true” followed by a religious quote). But then he severely criticizes science and its aim to seek out truth. Confusing right? I can’t speak for Vonnegut, but I think he did this because he believed that lies are good or beneficial. For example, Bokononism is based on “bittersweet lies” (2). These lies give people purpose in life and make them feel important. Sometimes, it’s good to be oblivious to the truth.

Additionally, in the Supernatural episode “The Monster at the End of This Book,” Sam and Dean are completely blindsided when they find out there is a prophet writing out their entire lives through a series of novels. I think things might have been less complicated for them if they hadn’t known this prophet existed. They mapped out their entire day just so they could avoid the prophecies. Thus, in a way lies are good and maybe that’s one of the possible themes Vonnegut was trying to convey. But, I could be completely wrong.

Cat's Cradle

In this story our character that is Jonah seems to be slipping more and more towards the idea that he himself is a prophet, or someone more in touch with God. The story of the beginning of Bokonon is similar to the story of his life in the way that events are dragging him from one place to another and at the conclusion of his travels hopefully will lie his true destiny.
Jonah's religious views hold a connection to this story that is beneath the surface. Since he is telling a story of events that occurred prior to his switch to being a Bokonist he was not acting on behalf of his beliefs but simply writing a story. The religious views are a hidden element of how he tells his story and offers the reader a sort of map that he seems to be following towards a higher meaning, what Bokonists believe as their destiny.
As he meets more members of his karass the further he gets dragged along this map that seems to be paving the road for not only his conclusion but that of the story he is telling as well. Members of his karass have introduced him to new beliefs and even historical events regarding his family (this deals with the tombstone he found in Ilium.
So hopefully at the conclusion of this story we will not only learn about the climax and conclusion of his attempted book The Day the World Ended, but we will discover what lies at the X on his map of life.

"Langmuir was absolutely indifferent to the uses that might be made of the truths he dug out of the rock and handed out to whoever was around.

But any truth he found was beautiful in its own right, and he didn’t give a damn who got it next."

After diving into the lies of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle in Thursday’s class, I became intrigued with discovering if, in fact, Vonnegut is human. By this I mean whether or not Vonnegut uses truth as the base of his lies. One quick Google search and a Wikipedia page later, I found myself with a whole floor of truth to his house of lies.

The most difficult thing for an author writing fiction, is trying to keep his/her audience interested in what they already may know is fiction. Like the author of An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge, the use of vivid and accurate detail of one’s surrounding can usually suck a reader in. The town of Ilium, New York, is used as the first setting of the novel as Jonah begins his search for the “truth” behind Felix Hoenikker’s life and the life of his family. The description of this town is deceptively similar to that of the Troy, New York. It isn’t surprising to realize that Ilium is the Roman city that replaced the city of Troy during the Byzantine Era. The reason behind using the city of Troy, comes from the point in Vonnegut’s life in which he began working, post-WWII. While it didn’t surprise me to find out that he worked as a writer, it did surprise me when I found out where it was he worked. Vonnegut worked for the public relations group at the General Electric research facility, where scientists were brought in to do pure research. Looking more and more like the re-search facility of Felix Hoenikker, I read on to find out that Vonnegut was specifically in charge of interviewing scientists about their research. This is where Vonnegut first became infuriated with scientists and their pure research. After interviewing these men it became clear to Vonnegut that the scientists were indifferent when looking at the ways in which their inventions could be used. One scientist that specifically stood out was one Irving Langmuir. This Nobel Prize-winning scientist quickly became the character of Hoenikker. The quote above is Vonnegut’s view of Langmuir as stated in the August 2, 1980 edition of The Nation, and clearly conveys the message about science that he tries to send in Cat’s Cradle.

There are many more similarities between Vonnegut’s life and the lives of the characters in Cats Cradle. I believe that the most important similarity is theme of Science vs. Religion. It is a theme that throughout history has chose one side or the other; that is until Vonnegut arrived. He points out and rips apart both fundamental institutions and plays them off as extremes. He then creates and favors a middle ground that consists of controlled research and religion that’s honest in its lies but that still makes it’s members happy.

It’s the hidden facts and the honest theories that make me continuously go back to the start of the book. Reading and re-reading that one line; “Nothing in this book is true.”

The Realm of Fan Fiction

Fan fiction is the fans’ way of expressing their love (or dislike) of certain published works. This attracts a lot of different kinds of people, who in turn, make a lot of different types of fan fictions. There are too many combinations of things that you can find within each “fandom” (as we call the published work that we write fan fiction for) for me to explain here. What I will focus on is two common types of pieces that are written: canon and alternate universe.

“Canon” is the term used to say that something is legitimate from the original piece. In respect to what the original author was intending for certain characters, many authors write pieces that are closely related to the facts. However, these can never truly be canon because they are not from the original author’s mind. While the scenarios presented do seem likely to happen within the actual work itself, it is still something from the fan’s mind that they can find themselves imagining with ease. That does not make it at all truly canon, although they can be pretty close (kind of like asymptotes). In terms of the name of the blog, the story is a lie despite sounding a lot like the truth.

The other side of this is alternate universes, also known as AUs for short. This is where a fan puts all of the characters in a setting completely different from the original one (like if you put sci-fi characters in a modern day setting). The characters retain the same physical features and characteristics, but they lack and/or gain other things like different friendships or powers. Readers can usually still see the original character that they love, but at the same time there are things that have to be learned about the new situation.

AUs, while usually having settings that are the total opposite of the original, are nonetheless very close to the “truth.” There is a tendency to retain as much of the character as possible while fitting them into new roles. For example, a tough fighter in fantasy genre would be portrayed as someone who studies martial arts in a modern day AU. The fact that it is a fan fiction instead of an original piece is another thing that clues one into the idea that there is some “truth to the lie,” so to speak. We cannot break ourselves completely away for the original, so we morph what we can of the truth so it could be as close as possible to the truth. It still has all the elements that make it a fan fiction, which is what counts in the end to most people.

Of course, there are varying levels between the two extremes that I have presented. Everywhere in between exists, creating a wide range of stories. Like every other writing piece, it reveals a lot about the fan. Most of it becomes their own interpretation of the original piece, showing the many faces of visibility. The truth and lies are really interpretations. Even if they are slash pairings of Sam/Dean.

Truths vs Untruths

There are way to many things to discuss in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Every time I read this novel there seems to be more and more to look at and I have a new interest each time. The way religion is portrayed captured my interest this time around.

The sheer fact that the novel begins with a quote from a fabricated religion says a lot. The religion is set up like the Bible with it’s chapters and verses, yet it has “religious” words which mimic religions like Buddhism or Hinduism whose sacred text was originally in Sanskrit. The word “foma” on the first page also sounds like it could have been derived from a Latin or Greek word. With all of the major religion references, Vonnegut is commenting on religion as a whole. He shows how religion is not founded on absolute truth because there is no way of knowing absolute truth as science, and the fact that there are numerous religions that contradict each other about absolute truth, tell us. I think that the existence of a fabricated religion shows the reader how easy it is for someone to make something up and gain followers because they state it as an absolute truth and the ideas are not obscenely eccentric. But Bokononism also shows us that just because the religion might not be founded on absolute truth or may be strange to some that it does not mean people cannot be happy.

I believe that while Vonnegut is commenting on the strangeness and how religion can be just as misleading as his own novels, he is also saying that religion can simply make one happy. The first sentence in The Books of Bokonon is “’All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies’” (5). They are lies because no one can prove the existence or prove that a way of life is the “correct way,” but they are true because faith is honest. The first line of The Books of Bokonon that we see is in the pretext where it says that one should live be all of the harmless untruths as long as they make the person happy. I think that this quote is stating that religious readings are true for some, but not for others, and as humans we have the ability to chose what we want or do not want to believe and because we cannot know the absolute truth, there will always be “harmless untruths” that we chose to believe because they make us happy.

Is it our own free will that determines fate?

After viewing the episode of Supernatural and reading the first half of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle the question arose, what is fate? What determines fate? Many believe events in life are scripted from the moment you are born, until the day it is over. But are the events that are scripted and set in stone like Supernatural, or are they events determined by our own free will. In the case of Sam and Dean, although their destiny is written through a prophet, they have every right to act out of routine and break off from the predictions that are written. However, even when they try to break, for example the burger in the lunch place, it always comes back around full circle and they end up doing what they are destined to do. I wonder if the same happens to us as characters in society even without knowing what our future holds. (Of course implying that we do have a scripted path written out for us).


I personally found the connection between narrators and prophets to be very interesting. Unfortunately, while I was reading Cat’s Cradle I did not become familiar with the reference. Between the Bokononist beliefs in Vonnegut’s novel and the prophet, angel, and devil references in Supernatural it is impossible to ignore the religious presence. It is difficult to understand the religious references in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle is because it is possible to read the book straight through without really thinking about the Bokononism too much in depth because the story keeps rolling. My question that I have is, why does Vonnegut decide to include this fictional religion in the book?


Since I am very superstitious, I do believe that everything does happen for a reason. For example, if I began writing this blog post a minute later, I probably would not have written about the same things, or finished in time to grab lunch at commons at 11:30 and run into somebody I went to high school with; small world.


In this blog post there were not points to be proven, but my questions remained unanswered. What is the importance of religion in Cat’s Cradle and Supernatural? What exactly is the definition of fate, and what determines one’s fate?

The Pursuit of Truth

Bokonism is a religion built on lies. Shameless lies, nothing more. And yet, I find Bokonism to be an ideal religion, a religion that utters the clearest truth: that the concept of pursuing these ideal truths does not matter in the slightest.
The narrator begins Cat’s Cradle with the statement that “Nothing in this book is true. ‘Live by the (harmless untruths) that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.’” For most individuals, the truth exists as some holy concept, something beyond ourselves. As Plato dictated, truth was one of the forms that humans could not even grasp. Clearly it was some idealized theory. As Cat’s Cradle so perfectly argues, this constant struggle for absolute truths is in itself a dangerous pursuit.
Cat’s Cradle emphasizes the fact that the pursuit of truth is a hollow pursuit; as the narrator states on line 54, “I just have trouble understanding how truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person.” While the truth is meant to satisfy, the question arises whether an eternal truth can ever truly be found. In Chapter 26, What God Is, Felix Hoenikker questions whether any human being can actually prove something that is absolutely true. Dr. Hoenikker dictates that nothing can be proven as an absolute truth.
When humanity constantly questions and strives for this overarching truth that binds together humanity, I believe that the personal connection between people is lost. As with the search for science, what has this truth actually imparted on us? Science has given us the ability to destroy the world ten times over.
Personally, I like to believe that the pursuit of happiness can be facilitated by both truth and lies. The downfall comes when humans devote their lives to the fallacy of attempting to find some sort of truth in everything that occurs.

un--conscience

The episode of “Supernatural” we saw in class helped clarify several things we will encounter in class. I have been quiet in class for several of these reasons. The biggest thing that was a shock to me was now realizing that the characters we create could have a conscience. I have never looked at writing that way. I always saw characters as just that-- never as a being that could in fact think for his or herself.

Although the “Supernatural” episode showed Sam and Dean as each having a separate conscience, and they do, but they are not the writer’s creation. I don’t think a character that has been created can have a completely separate conscience from his or her creator. After all, it is the writer who is creating the character regardless if he or she is good or bad. In class when we went through truths and lies, our lies were somehow related to the truth, so we weren’t completely lying. I believe that the conscience that a writer develops in his characters is related to him in some way.

However, a character can be an extension of the writer’s conscience. The character can be what we deny that we, as writers, can be. As I read Cat’s Cradle, I realized that the story was being told by the character in the book, not directly by Kurt Vonnegut. This is the second time I am reading Cat’s Cradle and I never realized this viewpoint. If it hadn’t been for this class I wouldn’t have picked that up otherwise, but I still believe that Jonah, the main character of Cat’s Cradle, is a part of, if not a sub-conscious of, Kurt Vonnegut.

The best proof I can give of this is Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut was a prisoner of war and was detained in a place that the Germans and the prisoners called slaughterhouse five. Slaughterhouse-Five was not an autobiography but rather a strange tale, from my point of view, of a misfit individual in a world where he did not belong. Vonnegut lived through the events in Dresden but also had his character relive them with his ability to lapse forward and backward in time.

The point I am trying to make is that although we may create a character that could be our foil, we as writers are dictating their actions as if we were that person on paper. However, from what we have read and watched so far in class has made me start looking at literature differently, realizing the point that a character could be seen as having a separate conscience.

"Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either."

Reading the first few pages of Cat’s Cradle I could see why the book applied to our class. The narrator speaks of his religion, Bokononism, and its “bittersweet lies.” The first line in The Books of Bokonon, is “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” Then the narrator himself comments on how “anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.”

Bokononism is not just a religion based on lies. It is also a religion that admits it is based on lies. It does not attempt to convince anyone that it can explain the phenomena of the world. For example, Bokonon creates a story for how the planets and moon came into being, but then immediately admits that the story is false. Bokononists are not made to believe in an underworld or heaven. They do not believe that they will ultimately be punished for their sins. They cannot actually believe in sin at all.

So what makes Bokononism useful? It makes people happy. It makes its followers feel like they are a part of something. When they perform the foot-touching ritual, “boko-maru”, with other Bokononists, they feel a special connection with another human being. The whole idea of a “karass” is that each Bokononist is part of a community. Bokononists all have important roles to fill in life and they cannot choose what they are or whether they will do them. They leave their lives up to fate.

After we watched the episode of Supernatural on Tuesday, we talked about how Sam and Dean were disturbed to find that they could not decide their own fates, that they were being manipulated by some higher power for his/her/its own designs and could not do anything about it. However, their situation could also be seen in a more positive light. They were significant in the important goings on in the world. They knew that their lives meant something. A goal had already been set out for them. They had a purpose in life.

People want to feel that their lives are worth something, that at some point in their lives they will accomplish something significant, that they have roles to fill. To a certain extent, many people want to feel that they are characters in a story. Plenty of times I have wished that I could be a character in a book or on a television show, having something important to accomplish and knowing with certainty that I had to do it, feeling a sense of satisfaction when it was over, and looking forward to my next adventure.

I would say that the main “foma” (fomum?) that The Books of Bokonon encourages is the idea that a person’s life always has a purpose.

The Concept of Fiction

Evaluating the truth is an impossible task to attempt because the truth is not a fixed concept but rather a matter of perspective that constantly varies. When considering the distinction between the truth and lies, we must consider what the truth means to us individually. While details may change from one story to another, and be falsified when attempting to create a story that applies to the masses, the emotions felt by the readers are constant.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle he writes, “My book is going to emphasize the human rather than the technical side of the bomb” (page 7), when the narrator discusses his unfinished book, The Day The World Ended. This line is incredibly important because it applies to the truth in every work of fiction. The truth of a book doesn’t lie in the small details that create the plot, characters, and setting. These are nothing more than “shameless lies” (page 5). It does, however, lie in the overall emotional response provoked in the reader. The author, therefore, invariably places emphasis on the human or emotional side of the story, rather than the tiny details (technicalities) that create the overlying idea.

In any work of fiction, the characters, plot and setting are mainly “harmless untruths” which the author includes to create a connection between the book and the reader. Details invented by the author, while usually untrue, have the capability of being true. This gives the reader a false, but stable framework in which to imagine the story. In Cat’s Cradle, and Slaughterhouse Five as well, Vonnegut employs the use of a fictitious town named Ilium, New York. The town as described to the reader has the feel of a real town. It is, however, nothing more than a ‘shameless lie’. The events that comprise the plot of a novel also have the capability of being true. In a book, if a writer describes a budding romance, he is writing a ‘shameless lie’ because this particular romance is completely fabricated. The budding romance, while an untruth, provides the reader with a feeling of ‘truth’ because it could happen, and has happened numerous times throughout history, in slightly different forms. The ‘truth’ of the story lies in the fact that it is relatable to numerous readers who have encountered a similar relationship and therefore, experience the emotions it evokes.

So while any story may be fictitious, if the reader can relate to the emotional side of the story, or the overlying idea the story conveys, it will have an element of truth to it. The truth of a story, therefore, lies not in the technicalities but rather in the human side of the story as the reader relates to it.

Read by the foma that makes you happy.

I actually missed the pre-text of Cat’s Cradle (even though it was not hidden on the copyright page in my book). I feel like the way I looked at things in the first half of the novel would have been a little different if I hadn’t originally missed the line “Nothing in this book is true.” At this point I feel like the line is referring to the Book of Bokonon, but I can’t really be sure. What if Cat’s Cradle really is the Book of Bokonon? What if the line itself is a lie?

Under the statement that nothing in the book is true is a quote from The Books of Bokonon that states “Live by the foma (harmless untruths) that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.” So what if the first line stating that nothing in the book is true is just a “harmless untruth” because maybe the book would make us unhappy if we believed that all of it was true. So maybe everything in the book is actually true, but the line “Nothing in this book is true” was just placed in the beginning of the text to help us live by the “foma” that will make us happy. I haven’t read the whole book yet so I can’t say for sure whether something horrible will happen (though it is certainly foreshadowed), but if something horrible does happen, the line “Nothing in this book is true” could serve to comfort us from the harsh reality that everything that happens in the novel actually is true. The pre-text may just serve as a way to help us follow Bokononism ourselves.

To reiterate, this idea may be farfetched, but maybe by putting that line in the beginning of the novel Vonnegut was trying to show us that, the readers who believe that line and take everything that happens in the book as false, are just living by the untruths that make them happy. Depending on the events that take place later in the novel, it may be a comfort to believe that everything that is described as happening, is a lie. If for example someone were to tell you that everything I say is a lie, and then I proceeded to tell you a story about how we are all just a figment of someone’s imagination with absolutely no free will of our own, who would you believe? My crazy story (even if it was actually true) or the person telling you that what I was saying was a lie. I’m guessing most people would prefer to believe that what I was saying was a lie because it would be much more pleasant that way.

Nothing in the following sentence is true.

By the way, we are all figments of someone’s imagination and we have no free will.

What do you believe? Live by the “foma” that makes you happy.

Are We Characters?

I really enjoyed watching the episode of Supernatural which had a similar plot line to that of the movie Stranger Than Fiction. In both, the main character(s) is actually a character in a fictional work that is being written by a seemingly unrelated second party. The plot toys with the notion that the audience members’ perception of reality is false and they may also be characters in other’s works, but just don’t know it yet.

The twist is clever and relatable to the class because it questions whether or not literature, which is generally considered to be fiction and lies, is actually someone’s reality and truth. In turn, it also questions the character’s reality truth-value. Essentially it asks: Is fiction true or is non-fiction false? With regards to Supernatural, the answer lies in which version of the story you believe: Was Chuck having visions of the lives that Sam and Dean have chosen themselves to live or was Chuck writing out Sam and Dean’s lives that they are destined to follow because he wrote them? Who has the power? Although these questions are specific to the TV show, the answers may reflect philosophical views and personalities. In essence, it comes down to existentialism vs. determinism. Therefore, the answers lie in perspective, which is not reassuring because then there is no ultimate correct response.

Although “Monsters At the End of the Book” succeeded at shedding light on interesting debate topics, it failed at making me wonder about the truthfulness of my own life. From that comment you can tell that I generally consider fiction to be false, or at least an exaggeration of the truth. To me, TV and movies are not real life, but rather an exaggeration of it so that the audience is entertained. Both Supernatural and Stranger Than Fiction integrate a thoughtful plot twist, but I don’t think it is a plausible one. Maybe certain religious followers believe that life is scripted by God, but I am personally an advocate of free will, chance and luck. To a certain extent, I don’t think it really matters whether life is predetermined or not as long as you never find out which is right. Life is your experiences and emotions; whether your decisions have been chosen for you or you choose for yourself, you live those moments and that’s what really counts.

However, if life is someone’s fictional story, thanks for writing me in!

“Live by the [harmless untruths] that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”

I’m hesitant to say this but I think I agree with this “made up” statement. More importantly, I think most people live like that, whether they are aware of it or not. Everyone kids himself in one way or another. I know I tell myself everyday that I wont eat anything unhealthy and somehow I justify why I should eat that chocolate chip cookie. Another example would be if you were to fail a huge exam, you tell yourself that your going to be ok even though you damn well know that you may not pass the class now. So the way I see it is that the reason why people live by harmless untruths is because they would rather be living in falsehood and be happy than live in truth and be miserable. Which makes sense; I mean who wants to be miserable? You only live once.

I thought it was interesting that Vonnegut chose to define foma as harmless untruths rather than lies. I’m starting to believe that “harmless untruths” are referring to white lies. But who’s to say that white lies aren’t as bad as full blown lies and who is to draw the line between the two? When I was a kid, I believed in Santa. Why? Because my parents told me that a fat bearded man came down the chimney to give me presents on Christmas. I fully trusted and believed my parents, why would they lie to me? I never understood why I couldn’t see Santa so one Christmas Eve when I was 7 years old, I took my dads video camera and put it in the corner of the room under a pillow. When I woke up the next day, do a camera with a dead battery, I took the tape out and watched it, excited to see Santa. I was devastated to see (but mostly hear) my parents putting out the presents. That “white lie” that was Santa brought my 7 year old world crashing down. Similar to what everyone was saying in class, I know I wont ever forget that feeling when I found out that what I was told wasn’t true. I didn’t know what to call that feeling then but now I know that I felt betrayed.

When I read the texts for this class, I don’t feel that same betrayal even though I am being lied to in both situations. I just feel confused and jerked around. I read it on my own and think I have a hold on what I just read but then I come to class and realize how much I missed. This time I was prepared for the lies and thought I was ready closely but clearly not close enough. I didn’t catch half of that stuff on just the first page. Not to mention my ethical and moral views on lying are challenged every time I come to class.

I swear I leave this class more knowledgeable yet more confused everyday.

The Truth About Truth

The famous “fate versus free will” debate has been argued for ages. The reason this question has been considered so many times is because there is no way to prove one side to be true; there is no way to win the debate. In order to prove a concept to be true, it is often necessary to provide some kind of evidence, either logical evidence or factual evidence, that supports the truth of the matter. For this particular debate, no proof exists on either side, so it becomes a debate of blind faith against blind faith. Because this debate cannot be won, the idea of even having the debate seems pointless to me.

Kurt Vonnegut’s book, Cat’s Cradle, turns this position on truth entirely upside down. Throughout the story, Felix Hoenikker, a scientist who developed the atomic bomb, is consistently denigrated by characters and portrayed as a careless, cruel man. We are told that Hoenikker did not pay attention to his family, hardly interacted with co-workers and only cared about his work. I feel Vonnegut formed this character to symbolize the factual, scientific approach to the truth. To juxtapose Hoenikker’s character, Vonnegut wrote Hoenikker’s late wife, Emily, to be a symbol for the emotional, spiritual approach to the truth. We learn that Emily's life centered around creating music, loving her children and developing human connections. Characters in Cat’s Cradle are very fond of Emily, who is portrayed in a positive light. Contrastingly, Hoenikker dedicated his life to finding the truth through experiments and research. Most of the characters dislike Hoenikker. With his development of these two opposite characters, Vonnegut appears to be conveying the message that science and proven facts are evils in life, whereas human connections and development are the right pathways to the truth.

At first, Vonnegut’s point about truth appeared to be backwards. I had always been taught that evidence is needed for proof of a truth. After pondering Vonnegut’s words, I think he was trying to tell us that there are two different levels of truth. There is a lower level of truth that can be explained by factual information. This is the kind of truth Hoenikker sought after. However, a superior level of truth, symbolized by Emily, can be found in broader questions that seek to explain what our purpose is in life and what love is, et cetera. Most of these superior truths deal with questions about humanity. These difficult questions cannot be answered with numbers, they must be explored philosophically. Because we are creatures of social interaction, it seems natural that the purest forms of truth deal with humanity.

Given that Vonnegut’s two levels of truth really do exist, I feel he must have had a purpose for informing us about these distinctions. Published in 1963, Cat’s Cradle was likely written in reaction to recent military conflicts around that time period, such as the nuclear scare in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. In response to these events, Vonnegut might be trying to tell us that, as we become more intent on developing scientific truths in the name of research, we lose focus on our true connection to humanity. Eventually, revolutions in science become destructive to humanity. These scientific truths can, in fact, be harmful.

I do not know if anyone will ever actually figure out these superior truths. Because there is no hard evidence, we resort to intuition and faith. These forms of proof lead me back to the original issue of fate and free will. This question will never be fully answered, but the thought processes that humans take when arguing over this issue will lead humans to truths are that are more meaningful and powerful than any scientific truth could ever be.

Truth, Lies, and Faith

The class title “Truth, Lies and Literature” seems to be fairly black and white; we distinguish whether what we are told is true or false. However, Supernatural “The Monster at the End of this Book” exposes what we will probably see in the coming weeks of class: that the truth is not just black and white. We are influenced by our own perceptions and values, and as Supernatural makes clear, we are also influenced by faith. Faith is an essential channel in an individual’s pursuit of the “ultimate truth.”

In Supernatural, brothers Sam and Dean seek an ultimate understanding of how and why their lives are being told word for word, emotion for emotion in a fictitious series. To comprehend the situation, the brothers attempt to find the dividing line between truth and lies. However, through personal experience, the viewer most likely realizes that this line is frequently fuzzy. For this reason, Dean and Sam struggle to find answers, while the author that they confront grapples with the newfound knowledge and responsibility that he has complete control over others’ lives. All three characters feel lost as they find that what they assumed about their own lives to be true was really a lack of complete understanding. The characters turn to one another for clarity; they hope that by putting together all of their thoughts and ideas that they can reach a complete understanding of why their three lives intersect as they do. As the three men realize that their own answers are not enough, they realize that faith is the missing piece of the puzzle. Faith is the extra variable that seems to give one access to a satisfactory, ultimate truth.

“Of course you have to have faith in order to find truth,” one might say. This is very valid; in order to separate truth from lies, one must believe what they are told, whether by word of mouth, through the media, books, or in what they witness. However, in addition to that necessary “material” faith comes a more “sacred” faith. In the Supernatural, Sam, Dean, and the author must establish a certain level of faith in order to grasp what they feel is the ultimate truth. An explanation is offered to them: that the author is a prophet protected by an archangel, sent from Heaven to record what will be the new addition to the Book of Gospels. Surrounded by divinity, the brothers are forced to establish their level of faith in order to reach the complete truth about their connection to a series of published and unpublished books. After a great deal of questioning, scheming and bickering, Sam and Dean seem to reach the highest level of faith; trusting that God is the explanation for their storybook lives. However, one does not need to have complete faith, or any faith for that matter in order to reach an ultimate truth.

We personally decide when we have reached the “ultimate truth;” once we are satisfied individually. This is directly related to faith; what one believes will alter the truth one perceives. In a situation similar to the episode we watched, individually we most likely would have come to different conclusions of the ultimate truth behind the story because of what we are each willing to believe. For some, the idea of a higher power may be a stretch, for others it may be the perfect fit, but it is our level of faith that allows us to accept what we think is the ultimate truth. Some may argue there is no ultimate understanding, others may argue there is, but it seems that there are truth, lies, and a whole lot in between.

"It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes

to blind you from the truth," Morpheus says of the Matrix during one of the most iconic scenes in science fiction.

(Click here for the scene. The relevant part is from 2:17 onward.)

Why this particular scene might have stayed so firmly wedged in society's collective consciousness is this: it offers the character a choice to climb out of an entire life of illusion. While the Matrix does not directly acknowledge its own status as a story, Neo recognizes on a certain level his personal role as a character controlled by an outside force -- but only once he opens himself up to that awareness.

“What truth?” Neo asks.

“That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you can not smell or taste or touch. A prison… for your mind. Unfortunately no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”

The fact that the Matrix presents itself as reality and doesn't draw attention to its medium makes these particular lines more profound for the viewer. For if reality is a prison, that means that the viewer is enslaved inside it as well — but unlike Neo, for us there is no simple choice between truth and lies that we can use to escape.

Besides this class, I am enrolled in courses in Sociology, Anthropology, and Economics. I spend pretty much all of my classes learning about the rules of human behaviour, the laws of interaction. I measure how people respond to certain incentives. I think about what roles both biology and culture have given us.

In a very weird way I identify with both Sam and Dean from Supernatural and Neo from the Matrix. As a human, when I study humanity I am reading about myself and the webs of my own reality. I am a character in the text I am reading, and I am controlled by outside forces that can still manipulate me even as I try to recognize them.

What is most frustrating to me is that as much as I study humanity, I am seeing the issue from the inside. Whatever the limits of human perception that I am reading about are, I have those too. So as much as studying humans and adding levels of awareness can make me feel like I am the author, I am also still only a character with no clue how the story ends.

Neo gets an incredible chance. By taking the red pill, he can supposedly free himself from the “prison for [his] mind” and escape the limitations of ‘reality’. After all, supposedly the only way to understand is to see from outside, to get a perspective that sees everything. If we could view life from outside of our own limitations of perception, just how different would it be?

And how dizzying would the power be that that would give us?

I am confined, of course, to the limits of my mind. My perception can only offer some degree of truth and some degree of lies. For us, there is no red pill and blue pill. It would be a little preposterous if there were, because even if the truth could be that clearly defined, would we even be able to perceive it?

As humans, though, as characters that can study in college their own medium of life, we still search for a greater awareness all of our lives. We search even without a confirmation that we are getting anything for it but deeper levels of deception.

“Remember,” says Morpheus, “all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Response

I was in the library last night huddled at my cubicle on the second floor when I opened the webpage titled An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. I expected a short story with a fairly simple plot, and that is what I got. So I read, copied and pasted from the webpage into a Microsoft word document, all nine pages of the short story. My initial reaction to the reading would have been right on track if the class was either English 101 or History 101. I followed the events of the story as they read and did not look any deeper. I analyzed Farquar’s character from a third person narrative, and asked many of the same questions I am sure my other peers asked. Why was he being hung? How epic was that escape story? After reading the last line, “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge” it caught me off guard, but I did not think too much about it. Farquar was dead, and so was the story.
Following the discussion in class, the story I read the night before was far from dead. The author Ambrose Bierce used a technique I have not been faced with before. He manipulated the reader by creating the narrator who then told us the story of Peyton Farquhar. How does the narrator know the facts? How does he know the thoughts of Farquar when watching from a ways away? If watching at all? The real question that arose in me was, maybe we encounter more situations like this while reading then we think. That manipulation and lying to enhance the story is a common practice, most readers do not know how to interpret it, leaving them with the conclusion of the story like I had viewed it at first. Bierce did a good job making it seem like he knew what was going on through the narrator’s eyes.
My point is, I bet if I were to revisit many short stories and novels we have read perhaps they may not be as true as I thought they once were. A very important point that Andy Shnacky proved in his blog post was “the power does not lie in the hands of the narrator to relay the story to us”. He mentioned at one point it comes down to the reader’s interpretation of the text and the reader’s responsibility to determine what is real and what is not. It does not lie in the hands of the author to spell it out for the reader. So in class when the discussion focused on “what the author did” and “what the author is doing” maybe it is not really the author doing anything at all, it is us the reader failing to determine what is real and what is not.