Telling the Truth Essay In the play, “Antigone,” by Sophocles, and in the novel, Nothing but the Truth, by Avi, the major theme is the importance of truthfulness. This is shown through the actions of the main characters, Antigone and Phillip. Antigone stays true to her beliefs by being loyal to her religion and burying her brother despite the pressures from her sister and the state. Philip, the main character, shows a lack of truthfulness by not confessing that he was causing a disturbance to the class and instead saying that he was trying to be patriotic. The two main characters provide contrasting examples on how important truthfulness is, and they both have a butterfly effect on how the stories play out, where their small actions
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He does not correct everybody’s assumptions of why he got suspended. When he got sent to the assistant principal’s office, he said that he was singing to the national anthem patriotically, but really he was just trying to annoy Mrs. Narwin, the teacher who he hated. To deviate from the truth, he tries to be ambiguous, saying, “Yeah, well, it’s sort of a…patriotic thing with me…” (p. 51). Since he lied once, this causes him to not want to tell the truth later, because one lie leads to another. This has big consequences, and one is the article, “Kicked Out of School for Patriotism” being published in newspapers. This topic is discussed on talk shows and commented about negatively in mail towards the school and Mrs. Narwin. In the first article published it says, “…tenth grader Philip Malloy of Harrison High School was suspended for singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner…’” (p. 99). The novel doesn’t talk about any potential riots, public protests, or any other things that can come from people reading this sort of news. If the novel continued after page 177, some of these may have occurred. This shows that you should never lie, but you should think about the consequences of your actions before you do them, because it can cause worse things to come than you would expect. For example, if you are a liar, …show more content…
In Antigone, we see a woman who is truthful to her religion by burying her brother according to the religious law. In Nothing but the Truth, we have a young man who doesn’t admit that he was suspended for being a disturbance to the class. This has huge consequences, for him and for everyone. These stories show that if you are telling or doing the truth or not, there could be huge consequences. In a random person’s life, if they decide to tell the truth or act the truth or not, there could be many consequences as well, including others than the examples provided by Antigone and Phillip. This also makes truthfulness among the highest ethical values someone can have. Telling the truth is so important, not just if you are Antigone or Philip, but for
He does not correct everybody’s assumptions of why he got suspended. When he got sent to the assistant principal’s office, he said that he was singing to the national anthem patriotically, but really he was just trying to annoy Mrs. Narwin, the teacher who he hated. To deviate from the truth, he tries to be ambiguous, saying, “Yeah, well, it’s sort of a…patriotic thing with me…” (p. 51). Since he lied once, this causes him to not want to tell the truth later, because one lie leads to another. This has big consequences, and one is the article, “Kicked Out of School for Patriotism” being published in newspapers. This topic is discussed on talk shows and commented about negatively in mail towards the school and Mrs. Narwin. In the first article published it says, “…tenth grader Philip Malloy of Harrison High School was suspended for singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner…’” (p. 99). The novel doesn’t talk about any potential riots, public protests, or any other things that can come from people reading this sort of news. If the novel continued after page 177, some of these may have occurred. This shows that you should never lie, but you should think about the consequences of your actions before you do them, because it can cause worse things to come than you would expect. For example, if you are a liar, …show more content…
In Antigone, we see a woman who is truthful to her religion by burying her brother according to the religious law. In Nothing but the Truth, we have a young man who doesn’t admit that he was suspended for being a disturbance to the class. This has huge consequences, for him and for everyone. These stories show that if you are telling or doing the truth or not, there could be huge consequences. In a random person’s life, if they decide to tell the truth or act the truth or not, there could be many consequences as well, including others than the examples provided by Antigone and Phillip. This also makes truthfulness among the highest ethical values someone can have. Telling the truth is so important, not just if you are Antigone or Philip, but for