The Ways We Lie

In "The Ways We Lie," by Stephanie Ericsson, the author depicts the many ways humans lie and justifies the reasons for doing so. There is the white lie, which is basically telling an untruth . Facades are basically changing your personality while ignoring the plain facts, as the title implies, is a false action done with the intent to deceive. Deflecting is not answering the question at all; it is being up-front about comfortable issues and not revealing the couple of very important issues that changes everything. The omission is simply when you don 't say anything instead of lying. Stereotypes create lies from actions of a certain group. Group think is to believe something just because others believe it. Out-and-out lies are straightforward, and dismissal is simply avoiding the lie all together. Delusion is lying to oneself. Ericsson believes lying is important in order to not hurt people’s feelings and to be successful and happy. I agree with Ericsson to an extent. It is true that lying may cause hurt feelings and a simple, harmless miss truth would have solved that problem. However, the author also states that she tried to go weeks without lying and she found it almost impossible. So basically, the author believes that society is full of compulsive liars but at the same time, lies are important,
I definitely agree with her view on why people lie. I believe that the author is reaching out to a general audience to basically inform people about the behaviors and different forms of lying. I believe she accomplished the purpose of informing people about all the different types of lies for several reasons. She listed the types of lies, their definitions, and provided examples of each. The author even goes to discuss the logic behind the reason people lie. The essay provides numerous facts, quotes, and opinions to the reader which makes it very informative which concludes the author’s purpose. Therefore, the essay was very effective in its purpose.

Works Cited

Cited: Stephanie Ericsson “The Ways We Lie” Words on Paper. Copyright 1992. Originally published by The Utne Reader, June 1992. Reprinted by permission of Dunham Literary, Inc., as agents for the authors.