Short Story Of Our Secret By Susan Griffin

Throughout "Our Secret" Griffin explores the different characters' fears and secrets and she gives specific insights into these "secrets". Through examining others Griffin comes to terms with her own feelings, secrets, and fears. She relates to Himmler, Leo, Helene, and everyone else even though she is different than all of them. One fact that can be made about all of these characters is that they all represent humans and human emotion

In the selected passage, the novel describes how to adequately keep a secret hidden from everyone, even yourself. By stating “you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that could be given a name”, this quote leads to believe that a true secret needs to stay a secret in the depth of a person’s mind. The secret has to stay there in a sort of hibernation, where its keeper has to store it without giving it any thought. In order to successfully keep a secret, it is necessary to not acknowledge the thought of it in the slightest way. However, it is also required of the person to be subconsciously aware of its presence at the same time. This method of keeping a secret appears to be impossible to achieve, since it conveys a

Griffin also uses examples from her own family to expand upon the title’s meaning. Griffin claims her family was constantly pretending to be happy, perfect or aristocratic. In family photos, everyone smiled together and attempted to make it seem like nothing was wrong. The author claims that looking back on these pictures, this was clearly not true, as she can see the pain her father his hiding in one picture, or signs of trauma in another. The real conflict underneath was never truly revealed. The family also made attempts to appear aristocratic and high class when they really were not. Griffin claims that the family was aware that this was not true, but still attempted to keep up the ruse. Griffin writes:

People may say that those deep, dark secrets we all try to keep hidden are just thoughts and have nothing

The people we see every day are not always who they appear to be. Our family, friends, peers, work associates, and even our own self’s change who we are sometimes to cope or to seem better off than we are. We put on “Mask” to show the person we want to be seen as and often times people wear more than just one. In Flannery O’ Connor’s, “Good Country People” many of her main characters wore mask. They each had their own reasons that they chose to conceal their real identity. Nevertheless, the characters in O’Connor’s short story wanted to hide their true persona’s or deceive other people. Sometimes it was merely done to cope with their tragic pain and in other cases it was done to deliberately take advantage

They hold all of our thoughts that we don’t want to reveal to anyone else, and also they hold really personal things between you and other people. They shouldn’t be broken, but when they are you can easily face the consequences. I selected this because secrets can hold fears, and this is a great example of it. No one could know you have a fear, and that is your secret. My reaction to this quote is that the world “also” means with someone else. This shares a connection with another person, and this is when a relationship bond starts to form. I thought this was important to note because even though it seems so simple it holds a lot of meaning to it. A few words could actually be a whole essay depending on what point you’re trying to prove. Secrets are hard to uncover, unless you can’t keep them. Other than that, this short and simple quote has a huge meaning to

Throughout the essay “Our secret” by Susan Griffin, Griffin talks about a few characters’ fears, secrets and she gives us insights into these “secrets”. Griffin comes to realize her own secrets and fears by examining others. She relates to a few of the characters such as Himmler, Leo, Helene and everyone else even though she is different than all of them. The only thing that all of these characters have in common is that they all represent human emotion. Susan Griffin reveals that everyone has a hidden side to them and anything being showed on the outside could be fake or a false representation of themselves. “I think of it now as a kind of mask, not an animated mask that expresses the essence of an inner truth, but a mask that falls like dead weight over the human face.” (Griffin 237) This quote explains what she means about secrets being the barrier to others’ feelings and having this mask hides what you really feel on the inside.

Like a hard steel cage, the lies devour and trap its victim yet only the truth can set you free. Edward bloor expresses this through a young boy, Paul Fisher whom knew the truth but flowed with the lies. He was blamed and framed for vandalizing an exhibit at a local carnival yet it wasn’t him. Paul not only was blamed but he witnessed a murder and decided to keep quiet, not only was his silence killing others but it was killing him on the inside. Young fisher reminded me of my own self sometimes. I have encountered time where i could choose to speak up and say the truth or hide in the shadows and let others face the penalty.

“Like circus performers, we smear on makeup to become someone else. Far beyond applying a little lip gloss or hair dye, our mask attempts to cover up who we really are. Our mask attempts to cover up who we really are […] what we’ve been through, what we know to be important, and what we are afraid to share with others”. (O’Leary, 36) John O’Leary focuses heavily on the concept of taking off our masks in his inspirational book, On Fire: The 7 Choices to Ignite a Radically Inspired Life. What O’Leary means by this analogy is that we should all break the barriers which we have erected to protect ourselves from the world, walls that were built after being hurt, experiencing something traumatic, or perhaps after being betrayed. However, such walls oftentimes do not benefit ourselves in the way that we may wish. Instead, more often than not, our masks do the opposite, and they isolate us from what we as humans need most: friendship, companionship, and love.

Instead, she coats her essay in idealism and excludes instances where the truth has had severely detrimental effects. Edward Snowden, an ex-CIA agent who informed the American people of the many mass surveillance and privacy intrusions of their government, was brutally persecuted by the public and had to flee the country for asylum solely for being a beacon of truth. In the section of Ericsson’s essay that analyzes a façade, she describes these false attitudes as “destructive” and only provides one in-depth, negative personal experience. She seeks to imply that we are better and truer to ourselves without these lies, but fails to actually detail how our lies would be impacted without them. By overlooking how many lives would be negatively impacted if we eliminated façades completely, Ericsson veers on dangerous territory of assuming such actions come without consequences. If we stopped adhering to office dress codes simply because they aren’t a completely accurate representation of our personalities, how many of us would be unemployed? In such a situation what becomes more destructive, a façade you put on for 6-8 hours a day or months without a stable income to provide for your

After the publication of this book, one event was when Griffin was standing by his car when his tire he had a flat, and a group of men came to approach him. He thought they were going to help him, but instead they dragged him from his car and beat him with chains and left him for dead. It took him a while to get healed from this horrific assault, but it was not just a random beating. It was because Griffin exposed the truth, and many did not want the truth to be exposed. They wanted everything to stay hidden and undercover. No one likes the truth because it’s a hard pill to swallow and people reacted violently to this truth.

We all have secrets in our life. Everyone is entitled to having personal secrets to a certain extent. Some things are very important to us and therefore we all have to keep our secrets stored in our personal mental diaries. Lots of secrets are pure fantasy we should all be allowed to have. Sometimes, people keep secrets because they are scared to hurt others or relationships with others. There are millions of reasons why we keep secrets.

These themes of hope and identity refer to the topic secret histories through the secret inner personal lives that people still manage to maintain despite this scrutiny.

Memory provides a sense of personal identity. Memories that were made from the past create the person that they have become today. It helps to ground judgments and with reasoning. As an illustration, one day a young girl was shopping at the mall with a group of friends and they deiced to steal a cute

Telling the truth is not always the simplest solution. In times of guilt and distress, most fear that the truth will only further complicate a situation. The selfish fear that complications will have negative impacts on one’s own image can persuade one to avoid reality completely. However, no matter how hard it may be, it is always best to be transparent. In the novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini indicates that in an order to preserve one’s honour, people will deceive others, flee their situations and dismiss reality. However, the truth is always revealed. Deception can appear to be the easiest way to handle an undesirable circumstance, but the results can prove to be pernicious.