“Tell all the Truth but Tell it Slant” by Emily Dickinson explores the ideas of communicating the truth, but doing so in an indirect manner. The speaker tells the audience to tell all of the truth, but tell it with a gentle bias. “Tell the Truth but Tell it Slant” indicates that we, as humans, can only handle some of the all powerful Truth.
From a young age, most children are told that they must always tell the truth. If a young boy is asked whether or not he broke his mother’s vase, he feels obligated to admit that he had because most are raised to be honest. The speaker’s first sentence immediately negates the gut instinct to follow that nagging voice in the back of one’s mind to tell nothing but the truth, and implies that we should “tell
From a young age, most children are told that they must always tell the truth. If a young boy is asked whether or not he broke his mother’s vase, he feels obligated to admit that he had because most are raised to be honest. The speaker’s first sentence immediately negates the gut instinct to follow that nagging voice in the back of one’s mind to tell nothing but the truth, and implies that we should “tell