Deception and Destruction

Guns, swords and knives are the image of ideal weapons used to win the bloodiest of battles— but the war can only be won with deception. When the Trojans believed that they had finally triumphed over the Greeks after ten years of gruesome battle, they lay no suspicion upon the large wooden horse given as an offering of defeat. Unbeknownst to them, the Greeks were hiding within the large wooden mammal, lying in wait for an opportune moment to strike. Troy, and all of its inhabitants payed for their foolishness with fire and blood. Infernos may have the power to ravage the world—to destroy entire cities— but nothing destroys humanity so much as deception.

While the legend of the Trojan Horse uses the concept of deception as a weapon of war, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, tells the story of a boy who uses deception as a mental defense.

In Martel’s novel, Pi Patel, the protagonist is stranded on a boat with an adult Bengal tiger among other zoo mammals after a shipwreck. He explains how the other animals killed each other early on until Pi was left alone with only a tiger for company. When the sixteen-year-old conclusively finds land again after two hundred twenty-seven days stuck at sea, no one believes his story. Scientists question how a boy of his caliber and experience could possibly subsist in such conditions; they claim his story is unbelievable, and Pi replies that “we believe what we see” (Martel 294). After multiple tries on the scientists part to get a reasonable answer out of Pi, he recites a different, and much more horrifying story. In his second recount of his adrift nightmare, the mammals are replaced by humans; the food chain becomes barbaric cannibalism; and Pi, the teenage, Indian, vegetarian boy transforms into a cold-blooded killer and lone survivor. At the end of his second narrative, Pi asks the scientist, given that his stories make no factual difference either way, which story is better, “the story with animals or the story without animals?” (Martel 317). It is clear that either way, Pi is telling lies either for his own sanity or for others. In his original story, Pi lives due to his own wit and cleverness. Pi is the boy who survives by mutualism and remains humane and good. The second story paints a more realistic picture for the world outside of a small lifeboat. Humans are the ones on the boat, and they cause the conflict and death. Pi is the tiger, the most wild and ferocious of them all. Pi is pure and noble in his favorite story, while the second story describes him as a realistic monster who loses his sanity. Whichever story is true, and the alternate false, Pi uses deception as a psychological defense mechanism.

Deception may have been the savior for Pi’s sanity, but it is used for quite the opposite in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible. The story takes place not on a boat, but in early American settlement, Salem, where the Puritans conceive a witch hunt after accusations made by seventeen-year-old Abigail Williams.

Miller’s story begins with young Abigail, an infatuated girl who lies in her attempts to get John Proctor for herself after a brief affair with him. She wildly accuses multiple townspeople, starting from the lower-class citizens before eventually accusing upstanding Goody Proctor, John’s wife. In order to get her claims across Abigail says that she saw the devil and ardently insists that she “danced for the devil” and “wrote in his book” (Miller 24). After her deceitful confession, Abigail gives up the names of the women with whom she saw with the devil. Throughout the entirety of the book, Abigail spins her web of lies until she eventually brings the town of Salem to a Hellish reign of terror. Neighbor turns upon neighbor for fear that they will be the next to be accused and hung. At the end of the novel, the witch hunt is called off and decided to be a hoax. Abigail is never charged, though perhaps it has to do with her untimely disappearance near the end of the story that coincided with John Proctor’s conviction as a witch. Abigail uses her great lying abilities to deceive an entire town to do her bidding, and that itself destroys the people.

The Salem witch trials are known throughout history for its lies and terror, which is why perhaps why so many shady stories are written about it. While The Crucible portrays the use of deceit for personal gain and corruption, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown showcases how deception makes one man so miserable.

At the beginning of the novella, Goodman Brown leaves his wife, Faith, of three months to go into the woods. As a Puritan during the Salem witch trials, one only goes into the woods to commit sin. Throughout his journey conveening with Satan, he discovers that most of the town is also in the woods. He loses his faith, and lives the remainder of his life in constant fear and suspicion. When Goodman Brown is in the woods the devil speaks to his disciples saying that based on each man’s thoughts, they “had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream” (Hawthorne 65). The devil goes on to welcome his children to “the communion” of their race of evil. Essentially, Satan explains that righteousness is an illusion, and that he is the father of mankind because they are full of sin and corruption. Goodman Brown comes to the conclusion that righteousness is a concept of deception, and thereafter leads a wretched, hypocritical life.

Humanity can create any and all of the destructive weapons it desires, but the most powerful will always be deception. It conquered the Trojans with a simple wooden horse and a mass of greek soldiers; it saved Pi’s sanity and protected him from a life full of guilt; it razed Salem and killed innocent people; it corrupted the mind of Goodman Brown, ruining his life. Whether used for good or evil, deception has the power to save everything, or destroy all.