Can You Tell The Truth In A Small Town Analysis

We all have some experience telling something that is untruthful or just an outright lie. You go looking for a way out of a tense situation when you need it most? Are you afraid of what happens when you are under stress, do you tend to be "creative" with the truth? In the story “The Secret Society of Starving” by author Mim Udovitch, girls that are suffering from eating disorders talk about the secret world of the online pro-anorexia (“pro-ana”) community. It is only there that they can truly express themselves and even motivate other anorexic people. Similarly, in the essay “Can You Tell the Truth in a Small Town?”, Individuals struggle to put their true words down on paper, knowing that if they do the secrets they share could result in them being ostracized from the only community they know, . In both “The Secret Society of Starving” and “Can You Tell the Truth in a Small Town?” The writers explore the different lifestyles of two communities and how they both seem to encourage individuals to hide the truth from the rest of the world, their lies compounding and culminating in their further removal from the community and their loved ones

The people represented in the groups from both essays

hide their secrets those close to them. From “The Secret Society of Starving”, members of the pro-ana community are open and truthful behind their internet persona and submerge themselves into the realm of chat rooms and blogs where they can (secretly) state their true most personal feelings without lying. Eating disorders and those inflicted with them are shunned in society. The individuals inflicted with these disorders visit these help sites to open up and be honest with themselves and others without reproach or condemnation letting their true feelings out. In reality these websites only exacerbate the illness, encouraging and sympathizing with their woes. The girls suffering from anorexia have a way to be able to reveal their inner self without the series of lies and subterfuge they use every day in hopes to cover up their affliction. This is possibly influencing them to further their condition and can lead to many health risks.

People who live in a small town like I live in do not have this luxury of being anonymous and open and must hide their secrets in a different way. It is common for people from a small town to try and avoid conflict and confrontation with others who may not like what they might say. The people referred to in “Can You Tell the Truth in a Small Town?” must either hold their tongue or be creative (lie) about some situations that if they reveal these family or personal secrets they will being ostracized from their community. Things that matter and the things that are really going on inside of a small town are often buried far below the surface. Norris provides an example of this in her essay when she states, “But the lie put forth by the other woman was intended to silence us.”(129) Rather than telling the truth, sometimes people from a small town will embellish a story or just outright lie to hide what they are thinking in order to conform to the small town's set of "norms". It is a strain on both the individual and the community to have to constantly omit or change facts in a matter (lie) to fit into the community's norms and not offend others. The members of both communities share feelings of repression and deal with this in different ways, in both cases these ways of dealing only make the problem worse.

Lies of Omission, Lies of exaggeration , blatant outright lies, where does it end? These separate groups lies stem from the fact neither group can truly be themselves and must find a way to hide their secrets from people close to them. Udovidtch recognizes this within the “Secret Society” when she states, “The sites are a way for them to connect… And they become very isolated.”(111) The web sites these girls visit create a community of people who all have the same disorder, where they can be completely open. These online websites become very secretive and very private, considering the whole reason for these sites is to get away from the rest of the world, a place where members do not have to lie and can "let it all hang out". People in a small town also have very tightly knit communities and are completely separate from the rest of society. Nobody knows the entire extent of what is going on inside of a small town and that is the way they want it to be. Although similar in the fact that the small town is “impenetrable”, it is very different in the fact that the there is nowhere for the members of these types of communities to escape and truthfully express themselves without repercussions, like the websites previously mentioned. Out of fear of what others may think or react, members of the “starving” secret community and people who live in a town, where everybody knows everybody, must keep the door shut on what is really going on. Is it better to have a secret community where people feed off of others with the same problem, possibly making yours greater? Or rather keep silent and never be able to speak freely? Both situations appear to only make things worse.

From both “The Secret Society of Starving” and “Can You Tell the Truth in a Small Town?”, the people described in these essays both share a sense of being isolated from the greater society they are a part of, afraid of what might happen when they let everything inside of them out for the world to see.

Although similar in the sense of how they feel, the two groups are very different in the ways they go about dealing with their problem and also the reasons why they must feel isolated from everything else. Between the “secret” society and the small town society, one way of life may not be any better than the other, but the shared repressed feelings of can be connected not only to each other, but can relate to almost every person in any community at one point or

another.