Summary Of Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir By Lauren Slater

In Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir, Lauren Slater described her personal early childhood story and young adulthood experiences of being an epileptic patient. She used significant metaphors in this book which required readers to reconsider what is real and what it the exaggerated part. Slater puts the idea up that she may be making her epileptic illness up. Slater was trying to tell the readers that her abnormal behavior was attributed by her epilepsy. However, in the last chapter of the book readers realized that she may never had epilepsy at all. Throughout her memoir, Slater is using epilepsy as a metaphor to give some facts that she was not able to write exactly, but our readers can find some private truth through the metaphor.
In the beginning
In chapter two, Lauren had a small seizure in the supermarket, and the policemen misunderstood what happened to them. Therefore, her mother was accused that she abused her child. When the policemen asked her if she had epilepsy, she kept silenced. Lauren Slater described her mental activities at that moment, “And part of me wanted us to be let go, but part of me didn’t.” (43) She felt guilty and thought she betrayed her mother. However, she still made that decision. Lauren eventually got the result that she could escape her mother’s control. “That episode did change my world, and my mother’s too” (45) Laruen went to a special school and have her own personal life.
Since the supermarket event, Lauren realized that epilepsy could be a strong tool to grab people’s attention, therefore she could get what she wanted. According to Slater, “My body had become epileptic years ago, but when I turned thirteen, so did my soul” (71). It indicates Laurens’s mentally change, she found the epilepsy is the perfect excuse to do some carry things like stealing people’s staffs. Slater describes her illness by using those metaphors, it also showed Lauren wanted more attention from