Truman Show Illusion Vs Reality

As an old song once said, “Is this the real life? / Is this just fantasy?” (Queen). The themes of illusion and reality are closely intertwined, polar opposites that mean nothing without each other. Reality is the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to the fantasy of illusion. In fact, it’s impossible to detect an illusion without knowledge of the reality behind it.

The Truman Show is an excellent example of this. Protagonist Truman Burbank managed to go through his whole life convinced of his world’s reality—until the cracks started to show. As soon as he realized the unreality of his situation, there was no way he could keep on living the way he was. And, as “Reading The Truman Show Inside Out” shows, not even the movie can maintain the illusion that the “television” cameras and the “film” cameras are entirely separate entities.

In the human mind, the size of an object is tightly linked to its apparent weight and mass. In the “Gravity and Size-Mass Illusion” experiment, it is shown that a person will perceive objects of the different sizes but the same mass as having different weights (Clément 6). This effect persists even when the experiment is carried out under gravity levels greater than or less than those of earth.

Furthermore, people will often choose their own realities, as shown by the villainous Montresor, in Poe’s short story, “The Cask of Amontillado”. It is quite interesting to note that throughout the story, Montresor never bothers to note upon the nature of the “thousand injuries of Fortunato”—or the one insult, for that matter. The listener is simply expected to believe the tale being told. While the murderer could be described as nothing more than a crazy man, the complexity of his plot and his calmness during its execution seems to indicate otherwise, although what exactly it’s indicating is difficult to