93 pages • 3 hours read
One of Us is Lying
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Themes
The Harmful Effects of Stereotyping and Gossip
One of Us is Lying critiques stereotyping and gossip by highlighting how corrosive they can be for both the individual and community. Both stereotyping and gossip can be dehumanizing and prevent people from seeing each other as whole and complex. Further, they are hypocritical. Stereotyping denies the reality that people are complex and contradictory, as evidenced in Bronwyn being both a high achiever but also incapable of excelling at chemistry and Addy being both pretty and insecure. Gossip is hypocritical because anyone is capable of making mistakes, as the book demonstrates with each of the narrators, their families, and their friends. Significantly, the book emphasizes that gossip is characterized not by whether information is accurate but whether that information is shared for the entertainment of non-interested parties.
Simon cultivates both stereotyping and gossip through his app, About That, and his stereotyping extends even to himself. When he refers to himself as the “omniscient narrator,” he is referring to his status as social outsider. An omniscient narrator is typically an unseen narrative voice that reports events, as Simon does through About That. His gossip is intended to humiliate others and make them feel small, the way that Simon feels. The consequences are grave for the individuals featured, including one who attempted suicide and another who was thrown out of her house.
Yet Simon does not want to be an outsider. Because he cannot have the popularity he craves, he chooses to become notorious and feared. Addy notes that Simon was always around the popular kids but not one of them, and Janae reveals that Simon resented this and believed he should have been more respected than he was. Janae reveals that Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” was Simon’s favorite poem. The poem is about cyclical wholeness between self and community, a poignant reminder that Simon was also a victim of the culture he cultivated. Feeling that he could not be one with the community, Simon chose to tear it apart, first through his gossip app then through his suicide and elaborate revenge plot.
Individuals may also internalize how others type-cast them (as happens to all four narrators), thus preventing themselves from growing and finding fulfillment. Each of the four narrators suffers for the stereotypes they adopt of themselves. Bronwyn’s inability to accept failure drives her to cheat. Addy fulfills the princess/prom court role to the point that she erases herself. Cooper cannot accept his sexuality because it does not conform with the jock stereotype. Nate believes his criminal past means that he does not deserve to be with Bronwyn. Their journeys move them toward greater wholeness within themselves, as well as greater harmony as a group.
The Value of Empathy
Complexity and empathy represent antidotes to the dehumanizing effects of gossip and stereotyping. As the four narrators grow over the course of the book, they each learn to see themselves in others, even those who may seem totally different, something Simon was never able to do. Doing so cultivates stronger community bonds and supports further growth for the individuals involved.
At the beginning of the book, Addy is so caught up in Jake that she does not see herself as a separate person with her own longings and desires. Her sole focus is on pleasing and obeying him. Ashton jokes that she is a barnacle who needs her host (Jake) to survive, a joke Addy does not find humorous since it’s all too accurate. After they break up, Addy slowly begins to recover her identity as an observant and caring person. She notices Janae’s anxiety and depression, Cooper’s remoteness, Bronwyn’s increasing attention to her appearance and to Nate, and Nate’s low self-esteem. She reaches out to Janae, and it’s her ability to empathize that encourages Janae to open up and reveal the extent of Simon’s plot. Seeing her insecurity in Nate encourages Addy to seek him out for long discussions that enable him to return to Bronwyn at the end of the book.
Nate is able to see himself and his choices in Bronwyn’s cheating. When she claims to feel remorse, he challenges her, suggesting that her remorse is the product of being caught. He does not like her less for it but accepts that she has many facets to her character, including that she is capable of doing something wrong. His journey in the book is to accept himself for the same. Nate also prompts the entire school to check themselves for going after Cooper in the cafeteria after he is outed as gay.
Before the events of the book take place, Cooper’s fear of being outed led him to get Simon blacklisted from Vanessa’s after-prom party. Late in the book, Cooper struggles to forgive himself for this because he recognizes how it fed Simon’s resentment and because he knows it was unkind and unnecessary. He draws on these feelings in his journey to forgive Janae for standing by while Jake carried out Simon’s plan. He recognizes that forgiveness of self and forgiveness of others are tied up in each other. Having empathy for Janae’s mistake also helps Cooper forgive himself.
Bronwyn experiences a similar realization twice in the book. The first time is when she is able to forgive Nate for his lie of omission: He never told her that his mother was alive. She wants to be angry and does feel hurt that Nate lied to her. At the same time, she too has experienced what it feels like to tell a lie “so often that it becomes the truth,” and she draws on this knowledge to work through her relationship with Nate (225). Rather than further dividing them, Bronwyn’s ability to see herself in Nate brings them closer together.
The second significant experience of empathy for Bronwyn occurs at the end of the book, when she struggles to come to terms with what Simon did. The media assign to Simon a feeling of “‘aggrieved entitlement’—the belief he was owed something he didn’t get, and everyone should pay because of it” (349). Though the extent of his plot feels beyond Bronwyn’s comprehension, a part of her recognizes in it the same impulse that drove her to cheat in chemistry.
The Impact of Family Relationships
All four of the narrators have fraught relationships with their parents, some more so than others. This suggests that complex family dynamics are a normal part of growing up, and as adolescents come of age, they must reckon with who they are and how they want to live in relation to their parents’ expectations and values. Bronwyn, Nate, Addy, and Cooper demonstrate different kinds of family dynamics along the continuum, from functional to dysfunctional.
Addy’s mother is twice divorced and dating a man much younger than herself. She uses Botox, does cleanses, and is otherwise preoccupied with keeping herself looking young and fit. Her repeated refrain to Addy is that she must take care of her appearance so she can attract a man who will take care of her and encourages her to use sex to hold on to her boyfriend. She criticizes Addy’s appearance and efforts and implies Jake is too good for her. After they break up, she urges Addy to find another man, since Addy is not “college material” (295). For Addy’s mother, the worst thing is to be alone. Addy notes that her mother has not been without a boyfriend since she was 14 and does not want to end up like that herself. Her older sister, Ashton, took a similar route as her mother by marrying young, but her marriage falls apart. After Addy’s breakup with Jake, Ashton provides emotional support, encouraging Addy to find interests and friends beyond boyfriends and beauty. At the end of the book, she rents an apartment for herself and Addy to live together away from their mother.
Nate’s family situation is the most dysfunctional within the group. His father is an alcoholic. A few years earlier, he was injured on the job and lives off of workman’s compensation payments. He spends his days drinking himself into a stupor and has been warned by his doctors that his liver could catastrophically fail at any moment. His worker’s comp does not pay the bills, so Nate resorts to selling prescription drugs to make ends meet. His mother, who is bipolar, disappeared years earlier. She had promised to take Nate with her but never showed up. At the end of the book, she returns to town, sober and taking appropriate medication for her bipolar condition. Her prolonged absence and previous instability lead Nate to feel distrustful and wary. At the end of the book, she has convinced his father to enter rehab and is living with Nate.
Bronwyn’s parents are both graduates of Yale and successful professionals. They encourage Bronwyn to work hard and achieve, and they hold her to a high standard. Her parents are with her at Simon’s funeral and accompany her to her first police interview, but they also point out when they believe she is wrong. Overall, her family is functional and loving, but this does not mean that she wants the same things they want. Believing that she needs to live the same way as they do drives her to cheat in chemistry because failing the class is not an option if she wants to attend Yale. They also do not approve of Nate because of his criminal past and troubled family life. By the end of the book, Bronwyn has opened up to her mother about her relationship with Nate and feels inclined to attend college in California so that she can stay close to Until Proven, the legal defense nonprofit.
Cooper’s father has been grooming him for a professional baseball career since childhood. He moved the family to California because it would allow Cooper to play baseball year-round, ensuring uninterrupted development of his skills. His nickname for Cooper is Cooperstown, a reference to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, where he would like his son to end up. At the beginning of the book, it’s clear that Cooper feels pressure to please his father, who expects Cooper to make his family’s investment in his baseball playing worth their while with a big salary that will pay the family’s mortgage. Cooper describes his father as “a good old boy” from Mississippi who believes homosexuality is a choice, contrary to Cooper’s experience, and uses derogatory slurs (231). Cooper’s greatest source of support within his family is Nonny, his grandmother, whose wealth funded the family’s move to California. She encourages Cooper to embrace who he is and to bring his boyfriend over for dinner. When Cooper reminds her that his father will not like that, she tells him that he will have to get used to it. By the end of the book, Cooper realizes that he has internalized his father’s judgment of homosexuality to the extent that it has prevented him from embracing who he is. He is able to walk down the street holding hands with his boyfriend. Though he plans to continue playing baseball, he sets his sights on playing college ball, instead of going pro.
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