Conclusion
Having finalised the job, I can say that it was not so difficult as I expected to be. It was an exciting experience to follow the story knowing that depending on my choose, the story could be totally different. Obviously, my curiosity made me re-read it many times and find the three different endings.
It has to be read carefully if you don’t want to get confused, because in one of the parts of the hypertext, it is explained that all the lovers he talked about were their own journals, but they called this way because they had a “code language”, but at the same time he manteins that both were lying each other.
Finally, I would like to say I’m happy to have choosen this story because, it is not only a fiction story, it makes you reflect about life and lies, how they affect people. And then, I have to explain that I was very incredulous about all these hypertext, a new type of stories for me, but I realised that it is much better than I though. So I get into a conclusion: Out of prejudices, first you have to taste, and then you can opine.
Time and space
-TIME-
In the hypertext “Lies” we can find a lot of time references. But whole story is being told from the present. He starts saying that nowadays they are living together, so we deduce from that, that they are in the present. Then he introduce the concept of the journal, so there is a conflict in time, because each page of the journal is writen in a determinate moment of life, so it is considered the past. But, on the other hand, we can consider this writing of the journal as the present if you see it as if you are writing it now. Moreover, if we analyse the time in which the story occurs, that would be a year (because he talks about last summer), it has nothing to do with the time a reader would spend reading this hypertext, that would be less than 5 minuts for each scene.
The journal writing system is always present in the story and especially in the structure, because in this short paragraphs decriving the story, it seems like a journal, with basic information and narrating the present action. Besides, as you keep reading it is only reflected the point of view of one person, of the boy, that’s another reason that reminds you to a journal.
When you write a diary or a journal, you normally refers to the present, but when you let it written, that already the past. So you don’t leave anything to the imagination, all your actions are collected in this journal, and you always would know when does it occur. It happens at the same way in this story, and the basic references we have are those the author includes in the text like: “July 25”, “last summer”, which helps the reader to understand the situation and the moment when things occur. Another way of seeing this general type of struture is that most of the verbs are in the past tense, like: “it was”, ” she told me”, “we celebrated”…
On the other hand, we also find many references to the present, because as in a diary, we are also treating “the now”, the time of writing for the narrator. Some of these references: “now”, “last night”, “this morning”… and as in the past time, here the tense has much to do: “I am”, “she is”, “we live”, “we dance”…
So, all these references to time help the reader to understand the story, even if it is not in a chronological order. To sum up with the time aspects of this play, we have seen that the two basic levels in time of the story are “past” and “present”, but the story is totally open to the future, so you can imagine the best ending for you of that couple.
-SPACE-
The other way of analysing this story is the space where it is produced. It is said that when you remebemr something in the past, you can remeber better the place where it succed than at what time it was, for example: you remember going to the cinema with your friend, but you don’t remember when it was, if was wednesday or friday. In this story, as in real life, happens the same: there is a moment where the narrator says that he didn’t remember when did it occur, but obviously, he remember what happened and with who.
There are less references to space in the story than to time, but with those references the reader can understand perfectly the situation. In the same way as it happens with time, in the space we also find two basic places: the space where all the actions occur while he was in Germany, and the girl was in other place that was not Germany, and the space of the present time. Moreover, in the story appears as the scene of must of the action one apartment, with one girl, and another apartment with the other red-hair girl, and the dance club.
This first apartment is where the couple are living nowadays, and the other one is the apartment where, in one of the scenes he describes in detail, because he don’t know exactly where he is. And the dance club, is the place where he met his girlfriend, and the other girl. The only description of one place is the second apartment we talked about, because he didn’t know where he was, but there is no more description from any other places, it is all part of your imagination. With this description, it let you see that it is Grabiella’s apartment, but it is a bit ambiguous because he says “The door opened slowly. Beautiful long black hair.” so she would be his girlfriend, we don’t know exactly.
The way the author don’t give us many clues about places in the story, we can determine that is because he is letting us imagine our properly situation.
Introduction
I’ve decided to work abour this hypertext because I found it very interesting and not too difficult to understand and to follow it. I was looking for some easy hypertext, because it is the first time I read one, and many others seemed to very difficult to concentrate on the plot, because of their complex structure.
So, thi is a hypertext which is structured with two basic patterns: one the “truth” and the other one the “lie”. You have to follow the story deciding to click on one or another. This decision will make the story different, depending on the word you decided you to cick in, although the content of the story is always the same. But if you choose always the “truth” your perspective of the story would be different than if you choose always “lie”, or if you go alternating both options.
The scene is always with a black background, and with some short paragraphs with red lyrics. There is no music, and any image. But if you try several times you can prove that there’s more than one ending.
The story tells the relationship between a boy and his girlfriend, and about all the lies they have told to the other one. They are living together nowadys, but the narrator tells that in the past they both lied to the other, and they used to write it in a kind of diary. Depending on your way of choosing, it would a happy ending, or an ending that gives you freedom to imagine what would it be.
The Faith
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0385.htm
Here I found an interesting article, in which I could find something said by himself: “My life is marked by a succession of failures which left their traces on my work. I think they’re the warp and weft of it.” So, he let us see that he is not happy with his own life, but he justifies all his works with his bitter life.
He does a review of all his life, and starting with his childhood, he admitts that he was mistreated for being the son of such an important person, because people hopes from him much more than he did; but he was only a child. He talks about it as a “mental torture” and the worst period of his life.
However, he keeps a good memory of his mother, because he said, she never interfered in his privacy. About his father, he says that he didn’t disagree about the fact he become a catholic.
He was very convinced of his faith, and about life after death. One of the sentence of his essays says: “Goodness has only once found a perfect incarnation in a human body and never will again, but evil can always find a home there. Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.”, which demonstrates all his blind faith.
He was hurt when he separated from his wife, as he was supposed to be: “I never knew love was like this, a pain that only stops when I’m with people, drinking. Thank God, from tomorrow there are lots of engagements.” But, personally I keep thinking that he wouldn’t be so depressed, as he went out with other women.