Non-material notions such as courage, love, truth or faith have been debated in terms of philosophical studies, as well as became central topics of literary works of different genres. Despite the fact that lots of approaches to defining these concepts have already been developed, new ones continue to emerge. For the purposes of this assignment I would like to demonstrate how different truth can be by examples of “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics” by Wustan Hugh.Auden.
Truth can be very different. Someone may associate absolute truth with in-depth understanding of how the Universe is developing, and what is going on in the world around us. Auden perceived the world from the point of view of natural orderliness and predictability, called forth by the fact that everything in the world is comprised of lifeless particles. So, firstly, we can presume that Auden respects the way physics perceive life and consider objective facts, proved scientifically, to be true. To be able to come closer to truth the author advises us to strive to become wiser (48).
Another type of truth, highlighted in “After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics” is more subjective. When referring to people’s passion for the process of finding out W.H.Auden singles out humankind’s willingness to explore the world as primary truth, which determines existence of secondary truth, represented by scientifically proved facts (33-36). Thus Auden manages to show how subjective natural trait of human beings, which has been proved to be true by many generations of researchers, contributes to emergence of one more dimension of truth.
If in case of Auden’s poem the course of truth is clear (in one case it is natural quality of human beings, while in another one it is derived from researcher’s works, the truth, central to the narrative by Kate Chopin, appears from nowhere in the mind of protagonist. After having been exposed to the fact of her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard started memorizing their life, and drawing conclusions, which the author introduces as absolute truth despite their subjectivity and being called forth solely by the power of the moment. Such an approach helps us understand that particular feeling or assumption, which emerges in particular moment, can be viewed as absolute truth. For instance, it is worth mentioning the example of the feeling of freedom, experienced by Mrs.Mallord, when she whispered: “Free! Body and soul free!” (Chopin 1). Here inner confidence of protagonist in truthfulness of her feeling is represented as a reason for doubtlessness in the true nature of her feeling. So here we can see that truth can stem not only from natural traits, inherent for human beings and scientific argumentation of what is empirically watched, but from person’s own perceptions of what is true and what is not.
Concluding, I would like to state that comparative content -analysis of two literary works, representing different genres and styles supports the assumption, regarding different nature of things, which are considered to be true. Furthermore, an example, provided in “After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics” clearly demonstrates the process of one thing being true determining truthfulness of another one.
