If
a tree fall falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a
sound? If the whole truth is not told is it really a lie? Both “An Occurrence at Owl Creek
Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce and the episode from Supernatural, “The Monster at
the End of This Book” are centered around truth and destiny and call into
question the inevitability of one’s fate and the necessity for truth.
Bierce
leads his readers to believe that the main character Farquhar has been able to
escape his unfortunate fate that is death. Despite the revelation that Farquhar imagined the entirety
of the third part of the story, why wouldn’t the readers believe Bierce? As a reader, viewer, bystander, we are
not taught to instinctually question the authority of an author, and in the
case of Bierce’s story, he is handing the reader optimism, something that one
would want to believe in. However,
Bierce rips that optimism out from under us as he reveals the lies that his
story was based on. The episode of
Supernatural played with a similar effect with a twist of an ending, making us
as viewers question how much of the episode actually occurred and how much was
just imagined by the so called “profit”.
The
ending of “The Monster at the End of This Book” not only puts into question the
truth of the episode, but it questions the idea of destiny. A new character is introduced in the
final minutes of the episode and proceeds to warn the profit not to share what
he has imagined to Sam or Dean because, in his words, “People shouldn’t know
too much about their own destiny”.
While this quote makes a point about the danger of knowing one’s own
fate, it gets further at whether or not destiny is a reality. Quite the controversial idea that is “destiny”,
I personally believe there is no predestined path for me to follow and hate to
think that I would not be able to escape my own fate.
Another interesting point about the new character at the end of the episode, especially juxtaposed to our reading of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek," is that we don't know if the entire episode had actually happened in reality or was just within the imagination of the prophet. When the prophet says "Is this really all going to happen?" we don't know if he had just had another vision, or if he was referring to all that had occurred in the previous scenes.
ReplyDeleteYou present an interesting point on the "if the whole truth isn't told is it a lie?". I think we can all remember a time in which our parents told us, if almost passive-aggressively, about 'lies of omission'. However if you ask me, omitting or "forgetting" some of the truth is not necessarily a lie; I view it more as a well-crafted story. Even if someone has the ability to misrepresent the proceedings of a particular event without actually changing any of the details, the story they tell is still, in my book, a valid representation of what actually happened; its just missing a few (possibly vital) details. But this understanding (or line of thinking) brings us back inevitably to the age old question, "what is a lie?" What separates a lie from a well-crafted story? Is there a difference? In american society, and even worldly society for that matter, lying is looked down upon almost as 'the forgotten deadly sin'. But why? The author of a novel literally lies for a living.
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