Pants on Fire - 2020 NYTimes narrative contest winner
Author: Varya Kluev
Network, The Learning. “The Winners of Our Personal Narrative Essay Contest.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 7 Jan. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/learning/personal-narrative-essay-winners.html.
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I never kissed the boy I liked behind the schoolyard fence that one March morning. I never had dinner with Katy Perry or lived in Kiev for two months either, but I still told my entire fourth-grade class I did.
The words slipped through my teeth effortlessly. With one flick of my tongue, I was, for all anybody knew, twenty-third in line for the throne of Monaco. “Actually?” the girls on the swings beside me would ask, wide eyes blinking with a childlike naivety. I nodded as they whispered under their breath how incredible my fable was. So incredible they bought into it without a second thought.
It’s easier to lie than to tell the truth. She believes that her lies are more entertaining than the bland truth.
Her tone goes from very self-centered, as in my lies got me all of these friends and I don’t care that they don’t know that I’m lying, to very nonchalant at the end where she admits to lying about all of these things in order to gain the trust and friendship of the other girls in her class
I lied purely for the ecstasy of it. It was narcotic. With my fabrications, I became the captain of the ship, not just a wistful passer-by, breath fogging the pane of glass that stood between me and the girls I venerated. No longer could I only see, not touch; a lie was a bullet, and the barrier shattered. My mere presence demanded attention — after all, I was the one who got a valentine from Jason, not them.
Through her diction she tells her purpose for lying and the she also describes how is felt to lie. She also goes into saying that lying is addicting.
She thought it was easier to lie and she would lie for the fun of it. She was addicted to lying.
She chooses to compare this to a drug, showing the elation she had from lying but also the addiction that was starting to form
She used figurative language to describe how it felt to tell these lies to make herself look better. She referred to a lie as a bullet. Once she told the lie and people believed it, anything was possible in her mind.
I thought this metaphor was actually very intriguing and was really well written, as well as played really well into her tone and the goal she had for the narrative.
This way I became more than just the tomboyish band geek who finished her multiplication tables embarrassingly fast. My name tumbled out of their mouths and I manifested in the center of their linoleum lunch table. I became, at least temporarily, the fulcrum their world revolved around.
Not only did I lie religiously and unabashedly — I was good at it. The tedium of my everyday life vanished; I instead marched through the gates of my alcazar, strode up the steps of my concepts, and resided in my throne of deceit. I believed if I took off my fraudulent robe, I would become plebeian. The same aristocracy that finally held me in high regard would boot me out of my palace. To strip naked and exclaim, “Here’s the real me, take a look!” would lead my new circle to redraw their lines — they would take back their compliments, sit at the table with six seats instead of eight, giggle in the back of the class when I asked a question. I therefore adjusted my counterfeit diadem and continued to praise a Broadway show I had never seen.
This sentence really spoke out to me because not only was it relatable, it shows how the mindset of her fourth-grade self was surrounded by this false narrative. The descriptive and profound words show the significance of what popularity meant to her and how it affected her.
Used imagery of her lies constructing a palace and her metaphor of her concepts as steps to her throne showed how she felt lying as a kid.
Yet finally lounging in a lavender bedroom one long-sought-after day, after absently digesting chatter about shows I didn’t watch and boys I didn’t know, I started processing the floating conversations. One girl, who I had idolized for always having her heavy hair perfectly curled, casually shared how her parents couldn’t afford to go on their yearly trip the coming summer. I drew in an expectant breath, but nobody scoffed. Nobody exchanged a secret criticizing glance. Instead, another girl took her spoon of vanilla frosting out of her cheek and with the same air of indifference revealed how her family wasn’t traveling either. Promptly, my spun stories about swimming in crystal pools under Moroccan sun seemed to be in vain.
She chooses to add the details about the vanilla frosting in order to appeal to the reader’s senses, this makes the reading more interesting and a detail most people wouldn’t typically add, but it adds more to the story.
The following Monday, the girls on the bus to school still shared handfuls of chocolate-coated sunflower seeds with her.
At lunch, she wasn’t shunned, wasn’t compelled to sit at a forgotten corner table.
For that hour, instead of weaving incessant fantasies, I listened.
I listened to the girls nonchalantly talk about yesterday’s soccer game where they couldn’t score a single goal.
Listened about their parent’s layoff they couldn’t yet understand the significance of.
I listened and I watched them listen, accepting and uncritical of one another no matter how relatively vapid their story.
I then too began to talk, beginning by admitting that I wasn’t actually related to Britney Spears.
The writer implicitly used the word listened to represent auditory imagery. She finally stepped back from her fake life and began listening to the real problems of her friends.
She makes a claim about listening and immediately gives specific evidences for the claim. She then repeats the claim and elaborates
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