So what?

            Reflecting upon this semester in Truth, Lies, and Literature, a few topics stand out to me. Manipulation and unreliable narrators are two of those topics that go hand in hand. The texts we read and films we watched were filled with unreliable narrators and manipulation. All the authors, writers, and directors of these works filled their novels and films with narrators who had their own biases and motives. Each piece conveyed its own truths, sometimes through lies and sometimes not. These narrators manipulated me to think and feel certain things. Although the word manipulation tends to have a negative connotation, I realized that it is not necessarily bad, as long as I am aware of how it affects me. Lies and manipulation have a tremendous power to convey truths, but to discover those truths I must be aware of the motives and biases of inherently unreliable narrators. Our world is filled with people who have a personal viewpoint, specific to them, which I will never be able to fully understand. As long as I am aware that their perspective is different than mine, and make an effort to understand from where their worldview is coming, I will be able to discover the truths that live within their ‘lies’ and ‘manipulation.’ This course has disarmed the words ‘lie’ and ‘manipulation’ and shown the positive and negative powers they have. With the right perspective, some self-actualization, and an expanded worldview, their positivity surely outweighs their negativity.