Truth

             What is this truth that we keep reading about? That every character within every book we read seems to be searching for? Does it even exist? Is the fact that a truth doesn’t exist- the truth itself? Seen prominently as a motif within Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, this idea is also demonstrated in John Gardner’s novel Grendel, where the melodramatic protagonist is torn between two concepts and confused as to which one is the ultimate truth. Even in Shelley’s romantic novel Frankenstein, we pondered upon the truth behind creation. So what is it?

Each novel we read contains allusions to the Bible’s creation story. In the story a truth is presented in the Garden of Eden. This truth, this knowledge, is seen as the fruit in the tree. The twisted apples in Winesburg, or the shiny apples that Grendel threw at poor, miserable Unferth.  The search for truth can also be seen in the Greek myth concerning the contents of Pandora’s Box and in many more stories across cultures. The opening of the box, or discovery of the truth, leads to disasters of massive proportions. Adam and Eve lose their connection with God and are kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and Pandora’s Box releases miseries of all kinds. In Winesburg, each person was destroyed, turned grotesque by the truth. In Frankenstein once Victor was exposed to the truth about creation, misery found him at every turn. After Grendel finds the truth, whether he believed it to be the shaper’s words or the dragon’s, he lives miserably and ultimately dies. He falls off a cliff. Let’s not pretend he didn’t jump joyously into death. These truths, whatever they may be, do not seem to bring any positive outcomes. No one is elevated to a god-like level; in fact, they all seem to be cast down- like Satan after his attempt to overreach the boundary between angel and God. The characters, like Lucifer, are all cast into a pit of self-pity and misery and chained to their despair. They are doomed to live a wretched, unsatisfied, and isolated life.

Perhaps no one will ever quite know what the ultimate truth is, and these books are only creative, well written attempts by authors who are just trying to figure it out themselves. And maybe, just maybe, we’re best left not knowing, seeing as to how all the stories end.