Lying can go one of two ways; either you get away with it or you don't. After that, you have to wait and see if the lie you told helped you or hurt you. So far, the way that I see it, Henry has told 1.5 lies. The first one being that he was a girl. However, he did not outwardly saw that he was a female. He simply stopped trying to object. The other time that I only kind of counted was when he was given the onion by John Brown and pretended he that knew what he was supposed to do with it. Henry's way of lying seems to be omitting the truth. This leads me to believe that he is just a shy 10 year old boy and that has led to these so called lies.
In my opinion by omitting the information, he has actually helped himself because by being a "girl" he will get better treatment. Also, by eating the onion, he has now become John Brown's good luck charm which will help him in the long run because he will probably get preferential treatment.
In these two cases, he has both gotten away with the lies and they have helped him.
"He simply stopped trying to object." That was a great sentence! At the same time, can one conclude that omitting detail is a form of lying?
ReplyDeleteWhy did Henry omit this truth? What was he trying to cover up? What was occurring during this time period that made it even necessary for him to lie?
When you say he would get better treatment as a girl, what information can you include to develop your opinion? What specific detail from the text can you include to support your position?
How does eating the Onion connect to lying?
I look forward to your response.
Prof. Young
Being a slave, Henry was used to lying because telling your master the truth did not always work out very well for slaves. This is probably why it did not bother him so much to stick with the lie.
DeleteOn page 20, Henry says, "'Whatever he believed, he believed. It didn't matter to him whether it was really true or not'". This was said while the old man was standing there with a rifle so I believed it was instinctive to just go with Henrietta rather than object.
I feel that by eating the onion, Henry was pretending to know what he was supposed to do in such a situation instead of asking what the onion was for. It is not exactly a lie but rather, a misunderstanding based on Henry's guess.