Children have always been told to tell the truth because lies are bad, but in these stories the truth and lies both hurt, although they were presented in different ways. In "Like the Sun," Sekhar vows to tell the truth for the whole day and when he does, the truth ends up hurting many people. Towards the end of the story, Sekar understands how much the truth hurts people; and he has to grade one hundred papers in one night, which seems like a lot, but really is not. In "The Open Window," Vera tells lies about her aunt to Mr. Frampton Nuttel. The lies that Vera told end up frightening Mr. Nuttel because on his relaxing weekend away, her lies make him more tense. Although "Like the Sun" and "The Open Window" are different, they both use examples of truth and deception to explore the ideas of irony and paradox.
"Like the Sun" and "The Open Window" tell stories about truth and deception with the help of irony and paradoxes. In "Like the Sun," Sekhar says, "At other times he would have said, considering her feelings in the matter, 'I feel full up, that's all.' But today he said, 'It isn't good. I'm unable to swallow it.'" (Narayan 80) The truth is always supposed to be a good thing, but by him telling the truth to his wife, it ends up being a bad thing. This example …show more content…
"Like the Sun" and "The Open Window" also use paradoxes to help explain the lesson or moral of the story. "Like the Sun" uses a paradox that is not easy to understand. It is that sometimes honesty is not always the best policy. Honesty can sometimes be a good thing when someone wants nothing but the truth, but it can also be bad because someone was not expecting it and it may hurt them. The paradox in "The Open Window" is that sometimes the cure is worse than the injury. We do not realize that sometimes telling the truth is worse than lying to