The Ways We Lie Analysis

An issue that has been highly controversial regarding honesty has been whether it is ever right to lie. Some people would argue that lying is not always morally wrong. From this perspective, telling a lie can be beneficial because the truth sometimes causes more damage than a lie would. To illustrate, a person might lie about how someone looks so that they are not offended. However, others argue that it is never morally right to lie. Stephanie Ericsson, who maintains this view, argues in her essay “The Ways We Lie” that “When someone lies, someone loses” (425). According to this view, a lie always leads to someone being negatively affected. Therefore, lying is wrong because it always results in someone being harmed. In sum, the issue is whether lying is moral or immoral.
In “The Lady with the Dog”, Anna and Gurov’s dishonesty ends up coming back to bite them: “Then they discussed their situation for a long time, trying to think how they could get rid of the necessity for hiding, deception, living in different towns, being so long without meeting. How were they to shake off these intolerable fetters?” (478). Here, we see that while Anna and Gurov were content being with each other at first, eventually the lie catches up with them. They are put in fetters, or chains, caused by the lie that restrict them. Another way to put it is that they are not able to live comfortably because they live in fear. I believe that lying always has consequences. In this case, the lie ends up harming the liar, rather than the person being lied to. In the end, rather than telling the truth to their partners, Anna and Gurov chose to lie and it ends up harming them more than honesty would have. If they were honest, they would have been able to resolve the issue peacefully and not have to live in fear. So, while at first lying might seem like an easy way out of a problem, it will eventually backfire on the