“The Liar” by Tobias Wolff

“The Liar” by Tobias Wolff has three major characters and many minor characters. The three major characters are James, his mother, and his father. I chose these characters because they seem to influence James the most and the story is being narrated by James himself. I believe the father was a greater influence on James than his mother was.
The father died and at that time, James started to lie. There had no recount on if James did lie beforehand but all his lies started with one. His father had died when James was home alone with him. Not knowing any better, he had asked his friend over to help him to move the body of his father from the chair up the stairs to his bed. “A couple of hours later Mother got home and when I told her that Father was dead she ran upstairs, calling his name. A few minutes later she came back down. “Thank God,” she said, “at least he died in bed.” “This seemed important to her and I didn’t tell her otherwise.” By omitting the truth he created the first lie. When his father was alive, they spent the time reading the newspaper as time to bond. “For this reason the most important act of the day for him was the reading of the evening paper.” “As he read he nodded to himself. Sometimes he swore and threw the paper down and paced the room, then picked it up and began again. Over a period of time he developed the habit of reading aloud to me.” I think that James was much more like his father before his father’s death, but slowly after, he started becoming much more like his mother. At the passing of his father, James and his siblings were solely raised by his mother. In the beginning of the story “Mother did not consider originality a virtue, and until my name came up her prayers were exactly the same as on any other day.” By the end, she is praised for her imagination to come up with the positive side and the