Personal v. Universal Truth

For this blog assignment, you need to review Anderson’s I Know the Moon, Gaiman’s Wolves in the Walls, O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story”, and Dickinson’s three poems. Once you’ve done that, you should post a blog in which you a) explain your interpretation of each author’s main point about truth, b) discuss the similarities among these points, and c) write about the piece of literature you liked best and why.

Each of the messages about the author's opinion of truth from the literature we read varies slightly from piece to piece.

Emily Dickinson wrote three poems demonstrating the absolute Truth which exists. She states this when she says "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant", implying that there is a Truth, a universal Truth. If there is the option to tell someone the Truth, then a Truth must exist. But the idea that the person would have to "tell it slant" because Truth "must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind" implies that Truth which people tells us is absolute, but we can only understand It in pieces.

The absolutist truth of Emily Dickinson clearly contrasts with Anderson's I Know the Moon. This story is about a group of animals who have each found their own personal truths in regards to the moon, implying that each of the creatures is right in their own regards. For example, I could believe that the moon represents this and has this certain purpose, whereas you could think something totally different and we would both be right. We would be right based on our own personal truths, but right all the same.

I feel that in general, a combination of these two ideas exists; or according to Anderson, exists to me. I think that everyone has to have their own personal truths. To me, I believe murder is wrong. But at the same time, I feel like patriotism (and therefore the fighting involved with it) is good. So this truth I have crafted into my persona, or perhaps it was military propaganda. All the same, I hold this contradiction deciding on the truth that murder is only fair if done for the right reasons. And this truth I would classify as a personal truth, knowing full well that a kamikaze pilot would probably not have that same truth. So for that reason, I feel like there is a universal Truth like Emily Dickinson talks about. One with a category dedicated to murder. For this reason, I understand the part of Dickinson's quote, "but tell it slant": we all can only understand a part of the universal Truth, and the part that we can understand is our personal truth.