Why do people lie? Let’s start with you. When’s the last time you told a lie? And I don’t mean a big one. I mean a little one, say to protect a
friend’s feelings, or to spare yourself embarrassment. I consider myself an honest person, but I
occasionally lie. My daughter believes
in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. While
I didn’t tell those lies precisely, I have played along. Even today, I woke up thinking of a palatable
lie I might tell a friend to avoid spending time with him and his new
girlfriend out of loyalty to his ex-wife who is also my friend. There are a hundred things that I don’t say,
or gloss over to keep the peace in relationships. Is keeping silent the same as lying? When it comes to lying, I have a lot of
questions.
Most of my novels are, in one way or
another, my way of answering the queries I have about human nature. I am most concerned with motive. I am far less interested in what people do than I am in why they did it. Why do some people cheat, steal, or murder to
meet whatever dark agenda they might be running? Why do others willingly sacrifice themselves
to protect, to defend, to help strangers?
But I am especially fascinated with why people lie. Why do we lie to each other? Why do we lie to ourselves?
I have had a number of characters lie to me
over the years. I start off thinking
they are one thing only to learn, as the narrative progresses, that they are
something else entirely. But Lana
Granger, the main character of IN THE BLOOD is by far the most
effective liar I have encountered. When
we first met, I knew she was hiding something,
maybe a few things. But the size and
scope of her lies surprised even me. Of
course, she had her reasons. Liars
usually do.
Given the corrosive nature of lies, and how
the act of lying and then lying again and again to protect the initial lie
takes such a heavy emotional and psychological toll, wouldn’t it be easier to
just tell the truth? I often look to
myself for answers when pondering my characters. Take the situation with my friend, for
instance. Wouldn’t it be simpler for me
to just say: “Hey, look, as much as I love you, I just can’t get past the idea
that hanging out with you and your girlfriend is a terrible act of disloyalty
towards your ex-wife.” Otherwise, I will
perpetually have to come up with excuse after excuse until the invitations
cease out of anger, annoyance or just embarrassment.
But the truth hurts. For Lana, it is far harder to bear the facts
of her life than to live a lie. Her
falsehoods form a cocoon, and inside it she’s undergoing a metamorphosis. She’s growing and changing. She’s reaching a point where she might be
able to push out through the layers of her chrysalis and emerge a new creature
altogether. So, in that way, don’t her
lies have some kind of redeeming value for Lana? Perhaps it is her psyche’s way of healing
itself from the trauma of her past.
Perhaps it was wise or even necessary for Lana to lie about
herself. Maybe it was her right to be
someone she wasn’t, just for a little while, until she was stronger. One of my other favorite questions: Is a lie
always a bad thing?
Writing about my lying characters has
convinced me that honesty is the best policy where my friend is concerned. But
I’m still not sure what I’m going to do.
It takes courage to speak an unpleasant truth. And I know this from
bitter personal experience. There have been
times when I have opted to say the absolute truth of my feelings. I have stood up against abuse, spoken out
against bad behavior, left situations that were too unpleasant to endure simply
for the sake of good relations, and offered honest responses to hard questions
asked by friends. In some cases, when
people were ready to hear the truth, things turned out all right. But mostly, they went badly. Huge battles followed, relationships were
sundered or permanently maimed, and I still struggle with thinking that I
should have just kept my mouth shut.
I think there are myriad shades of truth in
most encounters, layers of self that are revealed or concealed. The laying bare of the soul is a frightening
act of intimacy; most of my characters don’t have the courage for it at the
beginning of my novels. Some do by the
end. Maybe that’s the point, that they
all walk the road from lies to the truth.
And for most of them, there’s redemption in the journey.
In The Blood by Lisa
Unger is out in paperback and eBook, 13th February
This article also appeared in http://crimespreemag.com
Follow Lisa Unger @lisaunger
