"A lover is a liar, to himself he lies" (Vonnegut 233)

O’Brien’s and Vonnegut’s methods of manipulating “lies” in order to give their lives purpose are necessarily deliberate.

 If O’Brien believed that his stories were objectively true, he would not be able to temporarily purge himself of his fundamental queries by transferring them to characters. O’Brien’s knowledge that he is fabricating characters enables him to render them proxies which search for life’s purpose in his stead. O’Brien is able to live purposefully, linearly, because he transplants his soul’s circlings into his characters. Therefore, O’Brien must knowingly and strategically construct his stories.

If, while writing Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut believed himself to be divinely endowed with the tenets of Bokononism, he could not have known them to be lies, and Bokononism’s capacity to engender purpose would have been nullified. Bokononism must be composed of uplifting lies for it to fulfill. The crux of Bokononism is that it provides a set of beliefs that contradict common “factual” understandings of the world, and that the relative meaningfulness of these beliefs grants the self-liar transcendence over said “facts”. Feeling above the mundane world renders the Bokononist’s life seemingly purposeful: Vonnegut had to lie in order to generate a sense of purpose for his characters.

Conversely, the benefits that Treadwell derives from “lies” seem to be contingent upon his unawareness of his constructions. Treadwell felt that his life was purposeful because grizzly bears needed and received his protection, and because they loved him. Although Timothy worked to spread goodwill towards bears throughout the nation, and thereby might have successfully protected bears to a degree, his summer trips to the sanctuary and maze did not actually save bears from humans. He stayed in a wildlife reservation, in which the bears were legally protected, and he might have even endangered grizzlies by habituating them to humans, and rendering them more likely to approach people who would do them harm. Timothy said the bears “needed a caretaker”, and he believed that he fulfilled that role. Additionally, Timothy spoke anthropomorphically of the bears, attributing friend-like qualities to numerous grizzlies he had named and lived with, and he even claimed a mutual love between him and his personified beasts. The bears tolerated him for twelve summers, but I argue that they held no love for Treadwell. They rebuked Treadwell’s demonstrations of affection, consistently acted aggressively towards him, requiring him to scare them off, and eventually a bear even killed him. These “facts” did not impact Timothy’s emotions, because he apparently did not perceive them. “I am one of them,” Timothy asserted. “I had no life, now I have a life”: by “lying” unknowingly, Timothy Treadwell gave his life purpose. Thus, he distinguished his “process” from the conscious “lying” of O’Brien and Vonnegut, while joining them through his result.