An Interpretation of The Untold Lie From the Perspective of Existentialism

Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio is a classic modernist work. This paper aims to interpret the short
story The Untold Lie with Sartre’s existential philosophy, and explain Ray’s existential dilemma from the
perspectives of absurdity and alienation pain, and the choice of free will, in order to explore the essence of
human beings and the meaning of life. The absurdity of The Untold Lie is rooted in the alienation and
nihilism in the process of the transition from the handicraft society to the capitalist industrialized society.
In the alienated world, the so-called value standards no longer exist, and people are always in a state of
anxiety, despair and sense of unintentionalness. Ray seeks meaning from life itself, and finally chooses to
return to his own nature by returning to his family, which shows the choice of free will in Sartre’s
existentialism philosophy. This paper is beneficial to the study of the philosophical problem of how to live
in the works and the real world