Truth In Christopher Sekhar's Like The Sun

The experiment Sekhar plans at the beginning of the story is to tell the truth for an entire day. The reason as to why he conducted this experiment was because Sekhar believes that without speaking the truth, life is hopeless. In the story, Like the Sun, it said, “He realized that, morning till night, the essence of human relationships consisted in tempering truth so that it might not shock. This day he set apart as a unique day- at least one day in the year we must give and take absolute Truth whatever may happen. Otherwise life is not worth living.” Based on this paragraph, it shows to the readers the main character genuinely believes in honesty. However, because he was too truthful, conflicts were created. An example was when his wife served him breakfast. Instead of saying he was full like he always did, Sekhar said his wife’s masterpiece was difficult to eat. Thus, this leads his wife to wince, which suggests to

the readers her hurt and melancholy feelings. On another occasion, his headmaster asked Sekhar to listen to his music. Since Sekhar told his honest opinion about how bad the headmaster’s singing was and to quit singing, it caused Sekhar stay up all night grading papers. Sekhar’s absolute truth caused him to harm his wife’s feelings and caused his boss to give him a harsh punishment. Honestly, I believe the main character was courageous enough tell the absolute truth. He came up with the courageous decision to tell the absolute truth.
2. The headmaster is angry that Sekhar told him the truth about his music. In the passage, the master told Sekar, “Your suggestion was useful. I have paid off the music master. No one would tell me the truth about my music all these days.” When the headmaster said this, it was perceived through a sarcastic tone. Nonetheless, the master forced the main character to grade a hundred papers within a day. He told Sekar how he spent a fortune on the music behind doors. Without giving sympathy, Sekar told his master how bad his singing was and how he should not continue his music any longer. Even though the headmaster asked for his opinion on the music, Sekhar offered a bit too much of his judgment. Therefore, it seems the master made the main character grade all the papers by tomorrow morning to teach him a lesson about honesty and to get revenge. In the beginning, the headmaster generously granted Sekhar ten days to grade the paper because he was doing the master a favor regarding listening to his music. Though, after the honest truth came out, the headmaster making him thoroughly scrutinized the papers was rather a form of revenge for Sekhar’s remark about his singing. Honesty is important to some extent, however, there is a limit to telling the truth.
3. There are benefits to Sekhar’s truth telling. In the story, Sekhar saw relationships often consisted of kind truths. Yet, he wanted to tell the absolute truth, no matter what the circumstance was for one whole day. Through his truth telling, he learned that telling too much of the truth is detrimental and will cause harmful consequences. As stated in the story, Sekhar compared the truth to a sun. No one is able to look directly into the sun without blinking. In comparison to the truth, no human being can directly handle it because it is too difficult to bear. For this reason, since telling the truth can hurt other people’s feelings, many people do not say the absolute reality. By the end of the story, even Sekhar, himself, understands saying the complete truth can cause him to lose friends, such as a teacher. When Sekhar heard about the death of so-and-so, he replied to his colleague that that person was mean and selfish. It might not have stated what the colleague said afterwards, but one can infer the friend was not pleased by Sekhar’s comment. Thus, telling the whole truth might have caused him to lose friends. In addition, Sekhar understood through this day “there is a small price to pay for the luxury of practicing Truth.” This sentence, from the story, means the truth is valuable and should be used wisely. Nevertheless, I applaud Sekhar for doing an experiment others would not do. Although he knew there will be consequences for his action, he persisted regardless. I felt Sekhar genuinely had a bright idea about telling the truth, yet he took the idea, “Honesty is the best policy,” to literally.
4.

Reality and truth are two different words. Meanwhile, the truth is based off of what once perceives, the reality of something is what truly occurs. Based on the results of Sekhar’s experiment, I believe people prefer to hear the reality through tempered truths. By being told the tempered truth, the person is telling the truth in a kinder and nicer way. If someone, such as a child, heard the absolute truth, without any sugarcoats, it might hurt their feelings. Similar to Like the Sun, Sekhar told his master what he truly believed. Instead of telling the headmaster he should possibly practice more, Sekar decides to tell him to quit music. This infuriated the master. Even if the absolute truth helps “toughen” someone up, the tempered truth does not hurt anyone’s feelings. Moreover, the absolute truth might even lose friendships, as well. In my opinion, since the truth is difficult to tell already, many people desire to hear the tempered truth. Consequently, if it is told in a kind manner, it is easier to understand than if the entire truth was

told.