Theme Of Lying In Tobias Wolff's Short Stories

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As Wolff has said, lying is a way for some version of the truth to be exposed—it’s just a sort of storytelling. Sometimes he allows his characters, enduring inhabitants of a world "where wounds did not heal, and things did not work out for the best", a little last-paragraph consolation or revenge. When asked in an interview why most of his characters feel the need to lie, Wolff responded “The world is not enough, maybe?... to lie is to say the thing that is not, so there's obviously an unhappiness with what is, a discontent. Some of the lies are just destructive lies, and at least one of them is a competitive” (Lyons & Oliver, 7). However, there are reasons to why these characters are seen repeatedly lying over and over again. These characters are usually wrapped up in a search for their identity, leaving them vulnerable and susceptible to the world and those around them. Tobias Wolff is the master of the short story and reading the stories in this collection makes you feel like you're looking through a keyhole into small dramatic moments of ordinary life. After reading these stories, you'll swear that you know these characters as people. …show more content…
Their disease (the need to live in a fabricated universe) is partly a natural reaction to the banality and unforgiving brutality of our existence. Through the joining of their selfish and delusional tendencies, along with the dullness of their existence, they create a web of lies that both intensifies and demeans them. These lies (although there are more) can be seen in the short stories Coming Attractions, The Rich Brother, The Missing Person, and The Poor Are Always With Us. Wolff’s characters are lonely and long for a change in their
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The Liar By Tobias Wolff Analysis

case in Tobias Wolff’s short story “The Liar.” This story is about a teenager named James, who develops a habit of lying after his father’s death. The lying puts strain on his relationship with his mother as she tries to cure him. However, the story ends with James getting new start in life. In “The Liar,” the central theme is that the pain of losing a loved one causes people to deal with grief in negative ways. Wolff shows this theme through how James copes with the death of his father by lying and…

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