The Lie
Eli Remenzel, a boy who lied to his parents failed his entrance exam into a really nice school his parents dreamed for him to get into. This is the short story called, “The Lie” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Eli finds himself getting into trouble after ripping up the mail going to his parents telling them he failed. Lying gets you into more trouble than facing the problem head-on.
To begin with, this story has a few symbols like the notice he received in the mail, the school, and the test. The notice represents the failing of Eli’s entrance examination to get into Whitehill. The school represents where Eli’s parents want him to go, but Eli doesn’t want to go at all. Finally, the test represents the entrance examination that Eli has to pass in order to get into the school.
In addition, the point of view of this story is Third Person Omniscient Narrator. This allows the author, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., to have the reader know Eli very well and tell you everything about him. He also describes all of his feelings and emotions. He doesn’t go off of Eli and start describing another character in the story. He’ll tell you who Eli’s talking to and what Eli thinks of everyone and he’ll describe something or someone else and Eli will have something to do with it. In addition to this, the purpose of the story is that it teaches you not to lie, because its not a good thing but some people do it anyways. Lying leads you nowhere except to more trouble after you lied the first time. Eli, in this short story lied to his parents, beause Eli didn’t like the school at all. He lied, because pretty much all of his cousins, and ancestors have gone to the same school. When Mrs. Remenzel, Sylvia, found out about Eli lying, she was worried about what he did.
On the other hand, Dr. Remenzel cared about Eli not making it into the school, and that’s why Dr. Remenzel went to the head master and asked him to make an exception to let Eli in the school but, he was refused. Dr. Remenzel couldn’t face the fact that Eli wasn’t smart enough and that’s why he went to the head master.
In the end, Eli figured out that lying to his parents didn’t work out well. Sylvia wanted Eli to get into the school badly, and she was worried about him a lot. Lying will get you into more lies and will make you lie more. Just face the consequences right away.
