Lying Is For Losers

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Lying is for Losers Everyone lies. That is one of the numerous, unavoidable facts of life. Some people choose to daily live their lies, while others daily choose to lie in their lives. Regardless, of the possible short term benefits, deceit is ultimately never advantageous. Such methods of deceit are evident in Hamlet and “The Un-Numbing of Cory Willhouse”. In both the play and the short story deceit is used by protagonists and antagonists alike in a futile attempt to further their own personal gains. Shakespeare and Wolff utilize numerous examples to emphasize that deceit, a dominant theme in both literary works, never prevails; it always results in hardship and/or failure sometime down the road. For example, “The Un-Numbing of Cory Willhouse” itself is entirely about one young fellow’s actions, his deceit, and his struggle to deal with it for several years along the road. Deceit simply does not pay off. When Cory was a young lad of nine years of age, he and a select group of pals stole packages of Korean delicacies on Halloween from a local foreign grocery store.. The worst part of it all was that he could not, or rather would not, fess up. “He had lain in his bed thinking, I hurt in my guts.” (Wolff). Cory’s deception caused such inner strife that he physically hurt in his stomach, or at least thought he did, but yet there he was, six years later, still struggling with his conscience after hearing about the fire and reflecting on that fateful Halloween night almost half his life-time ago. As a result of his deception and his conscience’s reaction, Cory tried to find redemption by aiding the Kim family with the reconstruction of their shop, and gradually he had even begun to feel satisfaction from his work. His supposed selflessness earned praise and respect from his parents and others who knew what he was doing. “That was just what he wanted. He didn’t want
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