In many works of literature, the author tries to convey a central idea to make the story more meaningful. An example of this can be seen in Tobias Wolf’s short story, “The Lair”. This story is about a teenager named James, who develops a habit of lying after his father’s death. The lying puts strain on his relationship with his mother as she tries to cure him. However, the story ends on a happy note when James gets a chance for a new start in life. In “The Liar”, the central theme is that undealt loss of losing a loved one can cause people to deal with the grief in negative ways, which is shown by how James copes with the death of his father.
One main way Wolf shows the theme of the story through James is by how he starts to lie after his…show more content… In acting like his father’s death is not a big deal, James only cheats himself through the reality of the situation. When James is at his father’s funeral, he says, “I didn’t cry at his funeral and showed signs of boredom during the eulogy, fiddling around with the hymnals” (Wolf). He acts as if nothing happened or as if he was at a funeral of a person he does not care about. By running away from reality, he is losing the chance to mourn about his father’s death that could actually make him feel better. When James’ father dies, he thinks “It seemed wrong to leave him sitting up and I tried to carry him upstairs to the bedroom but it was too hard, alone. So I called my friend Ralphy” (Wolf). Instead of calling his mother, James decides to take his father upstairs with the help of a friend, as if his father was sleeping. Once again, his insensitive reaction shows that he pretends everything is normal, when it is clearly not. In fact, he does not cry, but his friend does. James’ way of handling his father’s death by refusing to believe it does not matter only ends up hurting him in the end.
Tobias Wolf’s short story “The Liar” shows the central theme of how ignoring the loss of a loved one can cause people to react to the pain in negative ways by the way James, the main character, confronts his father’s loss. Most of the time, he lies and tries to escape from the truth without realizing that it is worse for him since it hurts and disconnects him from others. Ultimately, Tobias Wolf is trying to say that when losing a close person, it is better to contemplate for it rather trying to run away from the loss and lying about it will only make the situation worse in the
