Throughout all of the pieces of literature we have read the theme of truth is a constant, whether it is viewed as a relative or an absolute, a single or a plural, provable or unprovable. Each of the tales we have read gave us some idea on how we can view truth, or how it is viewed and percieved.
The children's books were the most interesting for me, as they explained some very strong points in very simple ways, understandable even by children: In "The Wolves in the Walls" , the way we know truth is put into question: the mantra recited by the parents in the book ("When the wolves come out of the walls its all over") seems to be the sort of knowledge accepted blindly, by simple coherence and having heard it over and over. Throughout the tale this knowledge is questioned and finally proven wrong, when, in the end, the humans return to their home. In"I know the moon" a different view of the truth is taken, that of subjectiveness; in this story each animal sees the moon at night, and each describes it in its own way as something different. When the animals seek out a man of science to tell them what the moon is, they find his description of numbers to be inexact, and come to the realization that the moon is a great many things in its being. I also enjoyed reading O'Brien's "how to tell a true war story", a tale that spoke of the impossibilities of knowing the truth: he spins a tale that combines a great number of interesting notions and images of great beauty, all of wich he says could be quite untrue. He tells us of war stories, that to be true have to be without a moral, they have to mad, or they have to be somewhat false in order for us to believe them. This somewhat skeptical (almost nihilistic) version of the truth seems to imply that we cannot prove anything we are told or that we learn, that there is no objective truth, only what we believe. However my favorite of our readings were the Emily Dickinson poems: these took a fairly platonic view of the truth, as something great, absolute, self sufficient, eternal and blinding, something we cannot know all at once lest we misunderstand it.
These tales all have as a subject the search for truth, and each takes a different stand on it: in this they are all united, as each takes a different perspective of that truth we all seek. They are the opinions, the fragments of something larger and greater, comprehensive of all these views. Certainly amongst most of them the theme of a truth that is subjective is maintained, but each of these subjective views stems from a more expansive concept that is the objective truth.
This is certainly why I enjoyed Dickinson's poems above all the other passages we have read, for she truly strikes the center of the argument, by saying in her poems how each of us can only glimpse a fragment of truth, a slant piece of it that we can understand before we are able to move on to the bigger picture.
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I absolutely agree with you that the children's book Wolves in The Walls is a book that instead of proving what truth is, essentially criticizes the acceptance of a statement as true just because it has been said over and over. You are right that the author is trying to show that just becasue people always said, "If the wolves come out of the walls its all over," that does not mean it's true. I believe that the author was trying to make the point that don't accept things at face value don't assume their true just because you're told their true. I also agree with your analysis of O'Brien's How To Tell A True War Story in that I believe O'Brien is using truth, at least his definition of truth, to make a point as opposed to simply stating a truth. Also you are correct in regarding Emily Dickinson in that her view is more closely alligned with the correspondence view of truth which is simply that their is only one truth, it is what it is and it doesn't change.
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