Truth Through the Goggles of Time

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five is the perfect novel through which to explore the effects of truth on a work as it challenges readers to think long and hard about the role that the imagination plays in literature. As audiences struggle to keep their head above the tidal wave that is Billy Pilgrim’s story, they are forced to brand him either a maverick or a lunatic. Billy’s fantastic explorations through time and space are exciting despite their occurrence to such a dull man, yet it is this utterly uninteresting persona that makes the reader’s task so difficult. The character of Billy Pilgrim pathetic, bland and boring in every sense and that is what ultimately dissuades readers from attributing his experiences solely to insanity. In this novel, the truth isn’t something that is either given to, or kept away from readers, but rather a decision left to them upon receiving all the facts. Where science rules one head, Billy’s matter of fact testimonials sway many into considering the possibility of truth in his words, or at least believing that such things exist in Billy’s reality. What non-believers might not have considered is the extent to which truth carries into Billy’s ‘normal life,’ how much of this mundane existence is reality and to what degree has Vonnegut gone to distort the facts.

Beloved is the Truth

Though the topic of ‘truth’ is a fairly broad one, I find it difficult to discuss this theme in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. In a novel that candidly discusses the atrocities committed in the 1800’s lacks instances where something other than sincere accounts of situations are presented. This absence of deception is significant in and of itself as it reflects the extent to which Morrison can carry this story without embellishment. Morrison’s novel broaches the difficult reality of the inescapable nature of our pasts as the novel depicts characters such as Baby Suggs and Sethe as liberated without truly being free, going as far as manifesting Sethe’s past decisions in the form of a ghost. This ultimately physical representation of Sethe’s decisions solidifies a ball and chain motif shouldered by numerous characters. In summation, Beloved’s physical manifestation to Sethe is a beautiful demonstration of just how hard we endeavor to run from the past, only to unavoidably meet it head on with atonement.