The Truth is Rarely Pure and Never Simple: Oscar Wilde

Write about a character pretending to be someone they’re not.

The Truth is Rarely Pure and Never Simple:

Oscar Wilde 

In fairy tales, there is no room for ambivalence: As Bettelheim wrote:

“The figures in fairy tales are not ambivalent-not good and bad at the same time, as we all are in reality. But since polarization dominates the child's mind, it also dominates fairy tales." 

Cinderella is good—her stepsisters and stepmother are wicked through and through. There is no possibility that the wicked characters will ever have a change of heart. Goodness is rewarded and wickedness is always punished. The underdog, the orphan, the victim are always rescued or delivered by some benevolent force. And in Cinderella’s case this turns out to be the fairy godmother who makes sure Cinderella does after all get to the ball and arranges for a pumpkin to turn into a coach. At the ball she meets the handsome prince and he rescues her from the drudgery and unhappiness of her life. She gets married to the Prince and they all live happily ever after.

In the story of Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf finds out that she is going to visit her grandmother. He goes ahead and pretends to be Little Red Riding Hood in order to gain admittance. Then the wolf pretends to be the grandmother when Red Riding Hood arrives. Of course, after he has devoured the grandmother and then swallowed up Little Red Riding Hood, the woodcutter comes to rescue the both of them-he cuts open the stomach of the Big Bad Wolf and the grandmother and lovely Red Riding Hood are rescued and they all live happily ever after.

In Hansel and Gretel, the wicked witch who lives in a house made of gingerbread, cake and pastries, pretends she cares for the two children but she is really fattening them up on order to eat them.

In Snow White, the huntsman pretends to have killed Snow White but in reality he has not. The Evil Queen demands Snow White’s heart as proof that she is dead. So the huntsman deceived her by cutting out the heart of a deer and presenting it to her. 

So characters in fiction use pretence to further their aims. But pretence is also part of our human society. Once a little boy called David visited Santa Claus in a local shopping mall. He was thrilled to have met Santa. ‘What do you want for Christmas?’ Santa asked him.   

The little boy said, ‘I would like a remote control toy car’. He mentioned a few other toys but he was most eager to have the remote control car. When they left the mall in the town centre, his mother said, ‘now all you have to do is wait for Christmas Day’. 

They went into another department store and there was another Santa and a queue of children waiting to meet him and give him their lists. The Christmas music was being played and this gave an aura to the season of goodwill. The little boy’s mother was relieved that she had already bought her son his toys and now she could focus on sorting out the turkey, and finish off buying any outstanding presents for her wider family circle. 

When her son saw this Santa he said, ‘how could there be two Santas’? 

His mother said, ‘oh, they are not the real Santa. The real Santa will be coming down from Greenland on his sleigh on Christmas Eve. These are just Santa’s deputies and they collect information from the various towns and villages. That helps Santa to organise what he is going to bring to each of the children in those places.’ 

‘So’ her son said, ‘they are only pretending to be Santa’. 

So really pretence is part of life. The Santas in the mall are only pretending to be Santa and Santa is not real either. The parents buy the children their toys. Doesn’t this make-believe world bring so much happiness?  And the tooth fairy is another invention.

Although David was only six, he was quite mature. He thought about what he asked the Santa in the shopping mall to bring him for Christmas. But he did not tell Santa what he really wanted, what was really in his heart. He wanted a daddy. His mother told him that his father left them when he was only six months old. She said, ‘I will explain it all when you are grown up’. He did not like to tell his mother that although she was a good mother and looked after him really well, and he had a few aunts and uncles who were also kind to him and he had grandmother as well. But that’s not the same as having a daddy. His best friend Mark had a daddy and he was always talking about him. His daddy took him out fishing and played ball with him in the back garden. His daddy would take him to the park and watch him when he went on the swings and the slides. Another of his friends, John had a step-father but he did not talk about him very much. 

He knew Santa brought toys but he probably was not able to bring his father home. He wanted to show his daddy how well he was doing at Primary School and how the teacher had said he had a great vocabulary. His mother had taught him to read and she took him to the library to get out books. He loved reading and he had a great imagination. 

Sometimes he thought his daddy might just turn up again. He knew his mother was lonely and she spent a lot of evenings on her own. Maybe she would reconnect with him. Sometimes he hoped she might meet another man and they would get married and have a son and he would have a baby brother. 

David wondered if his father ever thought about him or made enquiries about him. Had he met someone else? He always harboured the notion that his father would find a way to connect with him. He had so much to tell him.