An experiment with an unreliable narrator

This story is something I wrote, playing with the idea of an unreliable narrator. I'm not sure how well that part of it turned out but the story is amusing, I think.

The Bench by the Road

            "We had to do it, don't you see?" he said, seating himself at a bench at the edge of the park.

            "Whom do you mean by 'we'?" I asked, following his lead and taking a seat.

            "My sister and I, of course. They were our friends, and nobody knew about them. It had to stay that way. So we did what had to be done."

            "I'm listening." The day was a bit cool; it was still only autumn, but the weather had already turned, and I buttoned up my black pea coat against the breeze.

            "It began years ago. It was all just great fun back then, cameraderie for the four of us. Suburban life as a young child has its dull moments, but for two country kids like Harry and Mary it was always exciting. They really took a liking to us, as soon as we introduced ourselves. I mean, we really made them."

            "You made them?"

            That's right, they were ours."

            "I'm not sure I follow what you mean," I commented, but he seemed not to hear, and continued telling his story.

            "For a time, we were inseperable. We enjoyed it, and we played some great games together. I can still remember the time Harry and I climbed up to the top of the water tower, and tested each other to see how close we could get to the edge. Harry was better at it than I ever was, his balance was about as good as his guts. Daring, you know, it's a big deal for a boy. Mary and Sis' hadn't wanted to come along, they had their own girl things.

            "The two of them were homeschooled by their parents, who were still a bit old-fashioned, since they were from... well, somewhere. We never really thought that out. A farm, in any case. It doesn't matter. They would come visit us at lunch, and we would always wait by the edge of the school's field for them to come. They always refused our offers for parts of our lunch, insisting they had already eaten, though we imagined they weren't so well off. It was just so polite, as only such people can be. I never could get used to that about them. So we would sit there on the bench by the road and talk with our two friends.

            "And the other kids would look over at us with an odd something in their eye. Sis' would always notice it first, but I was always sure it was jealousy. We left it at that, and nobody ever asked us what we were doing by the edge of the field. It was as if they didn't even know we were there. So we acted like it too, and never talked to anybody else about it. They were our secret friends, who only existed when nobody else was there. But those looks, they said so much more than any of us could have expressed, especially at that age."

            I interrupted: "Would you say they seemed accusing?"

            He leaned back on the bench for a moment, thinking. After a moment he replied, "I still think they were jealous. We spent so much time with Harry and Mary, we started to ignore our real, good friends. And when you're ten, you don't really care about that, it's just fun to run about and make a ruckus. Scrapes, mud, torn clothes – all signs of a fine afternoon in the walnut orchards."

            "When did that change?"

            "It took a long time, at least to a kid. By the time we had noticed that we had lost some true friends, it was too late to save those friendships. We never really got close with the same people again, but by the end of all this, it didn't matter. Grade school ended and we moved on to middle school. We made other good friends."

            "Like Harry and Mary?"

            "No. That was a mistake. It was that damned politeness, I started to think something was strange about that. Too polite, just too polite – at least when we were together, the four of us.

            "Sometimes they would sleep over, and then Harry would sleep in my bed and Mary with Sis'. That's when things changed. Not at first; the first few times they slept over, they stayed how they always were. It wasn't until the winter, that first winter after we made them, that they started to change. I noticed how my sister was acting at breakfast, and I knew something had happened. After they had gone, and we were on our way to school, I asked her about it, throwing a nervous glance around to make sure they were out of earshot.

            "I said, 'What is it, I saw how you looked earlier. What happened?' And she replied, 'Just Mary. She was so wierd! When I wanted to sleep, she wouldn't stop talking. And it wasn't just talking, she was talking about you.' I tried to find out what she had said, but Sis' just shut up and stared down as she walked. I knew it wasn't good, but I just ignored it. Or tried to. I started to get mad about Mary, in that way only children get mad and want to pull hair or throw dirt. Tantrum-and-then-cry mad. It passed by lunchtime, and we sat together and ran around our bench by the road, chasing each other until we fell down, laughing.

            "But that wasn't the end of it. The two of them began to spend much more time at our house, since it was rather cold. Maybe it was only since we were indoors more and were more bored. I only remember the feeling. Either way, they stayed over more often, and I noticed that Harry wasn't quite acting the same, too. I started to really be annoyed by him, it could just be so stupid!"

            "Do you remember what exactly it was that he did?"

            "No, unfortunately I just know how I felt back then; those vague notions of the memories from the child I was at the time."

            "You and your sister were also changing, growing up. I'm sure that had something to do with this," I ventured. This sudden confession of a half forgotten childhood left me feeling unsure. I had never seen this side of him before, never heard this story. The cold seemed to creep in more deeply around the cuffs and collar of my coat.

            "You're right. We started to be annoyed by that kind of friend. It was just little quirks about the two of them, mannerisms that started to get on our nerves. We began to deeply despise them, but only secretly, between each other. Until one day, when I decided I would get back at Harry.

            "I pushed him out of the bed while he was sleeping, and left him there on the floor without a blanket. It was really only a harmless prank, but the shivers he had the next day were something else. I pretended not to know anything, claiming he must have fallen out, but told Sis' everything after they had gone. She laughed, and I knew she was going to do it too, the next time they stayed over."

            "They didn't stay away after you had done this for some time?"

            "Well, they never really left. And we decided on the spot to trap them."

            "Trap them? And nobody noticed?"

            "Who would have? We kept them in our closets, behind our clothes, and kept them gagged and blindfolded, so nobody could see them and they coudn't see anybody. Not that they would have, anyway. We let them live in the dark. Every now and again, on the occasional sunny days that winter, we brought them outside and would tear off the blindfolds, and see how they squirmed when the light burned their eyes. Then we would throw them back in the closet. After a while they couldn't stand up anymore, and we tied their hands to coat hangers to keep them up."

            "You did this to your friends?" I stood up and faced him. I was perfectly beside myself, his calmness all the more infuriating (where was his moral compass?), and I had to fight back the urge to call the police. Curiosity won out over my outrage, however, and I sat down again as he continued.

            "They weren't anymore. We hated them. We wanted to get rid of them, we just didn't know how – but it was just a matter of time. We were all there was keeping them in this world. And we weren't done with them yet. We invented all sorts of ways to torment them, things only children know how to think up – some of which only sounded cool but probably didn't really work – and would try them out when nobody was around. I can't remember any of the details now, but I would steal bits of things from Dad to turn into devices to try out on them. Every now and again, Dad would find his things in the backyard, bent up after our tinkering, and he would blow his top."

            "He never asked what they were or why you did it?"

            "No, he just got angry. That was his way." His statement was almost naively plain, but in that way that makes one believe it all the more. His facial expression, a mix of definitiveness and, if I read it properly, fear, supported his credibility.

            "What would you do?"

            "I only really remember one time, since it was winter and the school was closed, we tied them to the bench by the road with a rope I took from the garage, and would offer them food every now and again. ‘Oh, but you won't take it, you already ate at home,‘ we would say, and eat it ourselves. Then we would laugh, and run around the bench until we fell down, laughing even harder."

            "Nobody pulled over to ask what was going on?"

            "All our neighbors knew we were just playing around. It was all harmless, after all! So, one day, Sis' and I were hunting around in the garage, the treasure chest for all our fantastic torture techniques, and we found a dusty box of snail poison. We took it right away, back to the bench where we had left them, and made them eat it. They squirmed and protested, but it was time to move on, to put an end to it. Then we buried them where we knew we could always find them again."

            "Under the bench by the road?"

            He gave me a quizzical, unbelieving glance, and shifted on the bench to look at me straight-on. He seemed to be waiting for me to figure something out.

            "No, in our minds, where else?" he finally answered. "That's where we all put the figments of our imaginations when we're done with them. You didn't think they were real, did you?"

FROM CHELSEA LOW ON ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

My favorite TV show, Arrested Development, features a main character who is probably the youngest and definitely the only con woman we have seen so far this semester, Maeby Funke. At just 14 years old Maeby learned that she could earn money much faster than working at her family's banana stand by lying and conning. First, she posed as her imaginary wheelchair-ridden "sister" Surely Funke and raised money for a mysterious terminal illness she called "BS." After her first con went off without a hitch and surprising success, Maeby's next con took place at a major movie studio while she was tagging along with her aspiring actor father to an audition. Maeby cleverly conned her way into a job as a movie executive which she held down for the next year, during which she produced several films. Her lies were only exposed when her cousin sent invitations to her 16th birthday party to everyone he found in Maeby's address book, which was filled with movie executives and celebrities who had no idea that the movie executive they'd worked with for the past year was only half the age she claimed to be. Afterwards, she briefly held a job at another movie studio until it was discovered that she had no high school diploma.

The following clip shows how Maeby would deflect any comments in conversation that could expose her true age. Her signature catchphrase "marry me!" became a running gag throughout the show because of how often Maeby would need to use it on her clueless coworkers complimenting her youthful appearance. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAH2NMjHOGU

This all might have been avoided if Maeby's plan to become a devout Christian hadn't quickly gone awry due to a simple misunderstanding....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsBpjqsI1tQ

The Great Gatsby Just Might Help Us Understand "The Wolf Of Wall Street"

We've mentioned it before but Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" easily could have been included in our reading list for this semester. As we're starting to read "The Wolf of Wall Street," I find myself identifying many connections between the two stories. I found this review of The Great Gatsby from when the film came out last year.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-serious-superficiality-of-the-great-gatsby

At the time it helped me sort out the way I felt about the over-glamorized, seductive portrayal of such a classic book. But reading this review with The Wolf of Wall Street in mind, it actually helps me make sense of this book as well. In the quote below, just one of many that stood out to me, the writer could have easily been talking about Jordan Belfort, or even Tom Ripley or Frank Abagnale Jr., any of our characters obsessed with fantasies and aware of people's willingness to believe in them.

"Fitzgerald understood the pleasure of giving in, and he saw people as desperate to give in to nearly anything -- a drink, a person, a story, a feeling, a song, a crowd, an idea. We were especially willing, he thought, to give in to ideas -- to fantasies. "Gatsby" captures, with great vividness, the push and pull of illusion and self-delusion; the danger and thrill of forgetting, lying and fantasizing; the hazards and the indispensability of dreaming and idealization."

Democratizing the Polygraph

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/10/31/what-happens-when-your-friends-smartphone-can-tell-that-youre-lying/


Essentially, this Washington Post article discusses the role modern-day technology e.g. smartphones will play on lying. I thought it was very interesting in terms of the course. Many of the texts and novels we have dealt with include some form of someone being duped by another. Basically, with everyone nowadays having a smartphone, will it mean the end of lying in daily life? Ways of accomplishing this are mentioned in the article such as an app (that is available now) that can measure the emotion of another just via voice, but also new technologies that are emerging to track emotions and honesty from facial expressions. Thus, ultimately the polygraph will become democratized since everyone will have access to one in their pockets.


So I wonder whether the supposed benefits from such a move e.g. more scrutiny for our publically elected officials will outweigh the supposed cons where lying is nearly impossible in our day to day lives. I definitely think it would be an interesting and very beneficial result for people to have better ability to judge the honesty and sincerity of their politicians. But of course, politicians would likely be the first to find ways around such tools of accountability.


But are there other dangers and/or benefits in technologies being instantly able to catch a liar? Thoughts?

The Descent of Man - Kevin Desinger

In class we've been talking a lot about whether there is a constant identity and what our propensity for violence is. Mainly, it seems as if the most prevalent identity we assume is revealed once the threshold for violence is passed. In one of my favorite books, The Descent of Man by Kevin Desinger, Jim Sandusky is presented with this exact dilemma. Such a surprisingly good book considering it was a random pick off of the shelves of the Berkeley Public Library last summer. Waking up in the middle of the night, Jim discovers two men trying to steal his car. A normal man living a quiet life, Jim surprises his wife and himself as he heads downstairs to get the license number of the thieves' car. All of a sudden, something snaps within him and he steals the thieves' car instead. From there Jim is sent into a downward spiral, caught up in the lives of the conniving brothers, lying to the police, and finding himself unable to sleep, except in the red light district of town.

One of the amazing aspects of this book is how normal Jim appears initially. The book starts with the crime, so there is no surprise later on in the novel about what made him snap. It brings up the question of how easily are we influenced by our instincts and whether we become liars by simply following them. Natural curiosity and an overwhelming desire to protect what he loves drags Jim deeper down towards a journey of discovery. How quickly can man devolve? What is it like to live in a society that won't help you in your ambitions? What can save you when you commit your first, second, third, and continuous crimes? How can any one of us avoid the pit, or is living a life of deceit more exciting than the one we previously knew?

Jim's life tells the extraordinary story of an ordinary man caught up in a bad moment. Whether he would have shifted now as he did or later in life is unknown, but the fact that he did raises all of these questions for us. A gripping story about how one event can change everyday life gives us insight into all the little aspects of life, to which we must ask the burning question, "What would you do?"

Read summaries and reviews about the book below:

http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2011/04/the_descent_of_man_review_with.html

http://www.thelitwitch.com/book-review-the-descent-of-man-by-kevin-desinger/

Your Identity Being the Reason Why You Lie More?

"Yes, bankers lie more than the rest of us. Wall Street reforms aren’t likely to change that culture."

Apparently bankers lie more when they consciously think of themselves as bankers. Nature did a study that focused on whether people who thought of themselves as bankers cheated/lied more than when they had their "non-professional hats" on.

We talk a lot about identity, and a lot of times we discussed the absence of identity playing a role in our characters' motivation to lie. But here we see that because they think they're a banker, they automatically begin to lie more.

What I found more interesting, however, was Washington Post giving the suggestion that people shouldn't think of themselves as bankers, but maybe as "hosts" or "advisors." Is the solution to end lies to strip someone of an identity? When you're a banker, shouldn't you consider yourself a banker?

I wish it wasn't three in the morning so I could actually analyze the impact labels apparently have on how much you lie and cheat — maybe you all can do that instead. I also thought this could be a relevant transition to TWWS.

Have a safe and happy break!

How to Tell if Someone is Lying

How to Tell if Someone is Lying, by Maria Konnikova, The New Yorker

Konnikova discusses ties in the research of lies with the infanticide of Karissa Boudreau.