Critical Lens Essay On Lies And Deception

The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates suggested that to be able to deceive is to possess power and wisdom, with furthermore the wit to distinguish lie from truth. Indeed, lying is an unavoidable consequence of the human’s self-preservation instincts in social interactions, thus it requires the skill to do it. Lie and deception are not only justified, but necessary in particular cases, and, I believe, Ed’s big lie in Mark Haddon’s ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime’ depicts such a case. After Christopher’s mother leaves him and Ed, Christopher’s father is forced to be a sole parent. Instead of telling the truth about it, Ed had told a lie to Christopher, fabricating the story of his mother’s death. Later in the novel, when Ed

Even though I would not state that telling the truth would drastically impact Christopher, judging by the way his mind works, the big lie possibly prevented unwanted consequences of the truth, for example if Christopher did not approve the separation, and wanted to meet his mother even though she left him and Ed. Stephanie Ericsson, in ‘The Ways We Lie,’ calls this variation of lies White Lies, or a lie that ‘assumes that the truth will cause more damage than the truth’ (Ericsson 2). In the novel, even though Christopher’s exhibits rational and logical thinking, he is too young to take responsibility for his decisions - 15 years, 3 months, and 2 days old - thus it is better for his father to determine and choose what he should know, and what he should not know. It includes information about his mother, who has left them reasoning her decision to not be a ‘patient person’ to handle Christopher, as Ed in contrast is. In the novel, Ed reveals to Christopher that he is the one who killed Wellington, hence it means that Ed has been hiding it throughout the novel. The lie is justified, if not

Furthermore, even after the family reunites, Christopher shows some degree of irrational fear from the presence of his father - ‘I had to spend three days with my father and stay in his house. But it was OK because Sandy [a dog gifted to Christopher by his father] slept on my bed so he would bark if anyone came into the room during the night.’ In ‘The Ways We Lie,’ Ericsson exemplifies that not all circumstances are obvious, doing it using a case of a Vietnamese sergeant who lied to a killed man’s family about the death of the man, saying that the man went ‘missing’ instead, making the family ‘not able to move to a new life’ (Ericsson 2). Ed’s lie is the opposite of the situation, telling Christopher that his mother has died, so that Christopher could move on without thinking about his mother abandoning them and being in London with another man. Nevertheless, lies have consequences as well as truths do, even if it is a relatively harmless white