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Nicolas Tingle
Writing 2
Mon/Wed 4-5:50
March 13, 2009
Living Reality in a False World
What is the truth? Is there truth in waking up everyday to the your husbands bad
breath? Is there truth in getting committed to something when coincidentally you were in
the wrong place at the wrong time? Is there truth in having the suburban home with the
freshly mowed lawn and the white picket fence? Is there truth in bumping into an
acquaintance asking “how are you?” and not stopping to find out because the question is
no more than a cliché? Is there truth in going to sleep today to wake up to the same
routine tomorrow, the next day, everyday? Or, is it that the truth does not exist?
The truth is merely but an abstract reality that no one is capable of obtaining. At
the same time it is the feeling at the pit of our stomach that meanders and grows with
curiosity, discontent, and dissatisfaction. The epiphany that a truth exists grows as we
experience more things in our lives that do not make sense to us. When that feeling
begins to nudge, then you begin to question. Now, there are two choices: either you begin
to search for a truth or allow yourself to be sheltered in a lie, pretending that an
alternative truth does not exist.
The Truman Show is a TV show of a man who has had his whole life set up since
birth into a TV show. Truman Burbank the protagonist and the “victim”, is unaware of
the lie he lives in. Soon Truman begins to contemplate on his curiosity and discovers that
the reality he believes to live in is false. In Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), we
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find a paradigm of Man in the Quest of finding an alternate truth to the one that he/she
already lives in. The Truman Show elucidates that the reality we believe to live in is
nothing more than a false reality; the truth is unattainable. It implies that the “true man”,
is he/she who accepts that they live in a lie. It is metaphoric of the lives that every person
lives in; everyone is absent of a truth. For this reason in the Truman Show so many
viewers are glued-on to their TV sets awaiting the question that dreads with anxiety:
“How is it going to end?”. The viewers are feeding their own lack of emotion and
adventure by living their lives through Truman’s courage. They watch because he
accomplishes something that the ordinary person is seldom successful of doing. They
believe that Truman has finally reached a truth. Since they have not reached such a truth,
they watch his story with awe; he is their hero.
But Truman has not reached truth. Instead, I bring to light the idea that even when
Truman exits the door of a life that was falsely created for him he has not reached truth.
The truth is not how it ends. He, and the million of viewers his story stands symbolic for,
will never be able to find a truth. Every person is succumbed in a life that lacks a truth
and they obscure themselves from their way out. Truman’s story is but a replica of the
life of the ordinary civilian. Everyone is aware that there is a lie that they live in and must
escape but instead they conform. As stated by George Bernard Shaw, “The Reasonable
man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the
world to himself.” showing that Truman is the unreasonable man who decides to follow
his delirious impulses and viewers look up to him for taking such a chance. The average
person chooses to conform with the life that is given to them and that is what makes the
moment that Truman has the choice to escape so anxious.
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His viewers admire him because they believe that he has said no to adapting to a false
world. What they do not realize is that Truman has been living their same lie the whole
time. Take for instance Truman’s daily charade of greeting his neighbors with a “Good
morning, and in case I don't see ya: Good afternoon, good evening, and good night!”.
This act has hypocrisy written all over it. His face is twisted into an ecstatic exaggeration
of sarcasm when he says this. Like everyone else Truman stresses to keep a mask on in
front of people. This shows that even in a show that was meant to protect Truman from
having to be a gloomy and untainted product of societies lies and corruption Truman still
found a need to be false. This makes Truman not only the product of a fake and planned
out world but also an actor within it. Truman has rightfully earned the script of a
protagonist. He too is involved as an actor in his make believe world. Another example of
his falsity is his commitment of love to his wife when he has an obsession in finding
Sylvia, the real love of his life. If that was not enough, Truman closes his finishing act
with a bow. Suggesting that he realizes that he was able to play all the people that where
trying to play him as he implies when he says that there was never a camera in his head.
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This makes Truman as much of a liar as any of the other actors in the show. He is the
perfect example of how everybody plays a part in the falsity of life. Cristof, the creator of
the show states, “I have given Truman the chance to lead a normal life. The world, the
place you live in, is the sick place.” He is trying to make Sylvia understand that the show
he has put Truman in is something good. That the life he has created for him in the show
set is a lot happier than the one that awaits him outside. As he mentions before Truman
leaves the set, the life outside of the TV show will be just as false as the one behind the
door if not worse.
I further suggest that the opportunity that Truman had to walk out of the door is
an opportunity that everyone has in his or her own life. The door that Truman opened was
unlocked. No one ever made it completely obscure to him, it was always there, open. He,
as many others do, set his own impediments (fear, refusing to travel in water, avoiding
the curiosity that derived from the signs, and ignoring his intuition) to reaching that door.
The door is not locked in Truman’s world, and neither is it locked in the lives of every
other person or viewer. People choose to pretend and be ignorant of the lie they live in
because it is scary. So, instead they choose to conform. As Cristof says, “If his was more
than just a vague ambition, if he was absolutely determined to discover the truth, there's
no way we could prevent him.” Truman had the opportunity to leave this lie earlier but it
was his choice not to take the opportunity and look for an open door. The viewers too can
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find the door to try to escape their own lie but prefer to satisfy with false emotions they
get from watching Truman.
The open door can be many things, but what is Truman really getting into? It can
be as Cristof suggested, Truman is walking into even less of a reality. Truman will never
reach a place of truth. He has walked into the world of the viewers who are living just as
big of a lie within their own lives as Truman lived in the TV show. Truman chose another
false reality where he will now become an actor within another crew. He will only learn
how to adapt to the new world that he has stepped into. Truman will never reach a
tangible truth.