“The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight-rope.”
– Oscar Wilde
The hallmark of a well-told story is that the protagonist is struggling with a situation that offers no easy solution. Stories often flip and turn about, contradict themselves, and reach for truths beyond simple logic. For a writer who enjoys stretching the limits of language to reach the utmost bound of human thought, there is no better tool than the paradox.
A paradox is a statement that seems to contradict itself but actually uses that contradiction to make a point and reveal a deeper truth. To better understand the nature of paradoxes and how they can become a valuable tool in your own writing, in this article I’ll take a closer look at the world of truth hidden in contradiction and arm you with a Story Weapon to share your truth.
Paradox in writing uses apparent contradiction to reveal deeper emotional or thematic truth. By understanding the difference between logical and literary paradox, you can use contradiction to sharpen themes, deepen meaning, and create memorable lines.
Two different approaches to paradox
One way to understand paradoxes is to split them up into two camps: the logical paradox and the literary paradox. Let’s start with the logical paradox, which can certainly show up in a work of literature but has a decidedly different nature than a literary paradox.
Logical paradoxes
The logical paradox belongs to the world of logic and mathematics, generally created to point out a flaw in thought. These paradoxes use language to demonstrate a thought, but are often also expressible in pure mathematical symbols. A simple example would be the pair of sentences: “The following sentence is false. The preceding sentence is true.”
You’ve probably seen a form of this paradox in the classic riddle with two guards: one who always lies and one who always tells the truth. The consideration of such a paradox is intended to challenge an implicit premise in how we approach logical truth.
Here’s a brief analysis from physicist Douglas Hofstadter, who uses the term “Strange Loops” for paradoxes like this:
The ‘blame’ for this Strange Loop can’t be pinned on either sentence – only on the way they ‘point’ at each other. In the same way, each local region of Ascending and Descending is quite legitimate; it is only the way they are globally put together that creates an impossibility.
The main characteristic of the logical paradox is that there is no satisfying solution. Instead, we’re invited to a new idea. In this case, it’s the idea that there are local regions of logic and flows of logic which can ascend or descend.
While this is interesting, you can see why its place is more in the world of mathematics and philosophy than literature. If you’ve got a logical paradox in your work somewhere, you’re likely using it as a piece of dialogue or background for a character who would be interested in such things. Maybe they’re a physicist or mathematician; a logical paradox they’re exploring would be a reasonable piece of background information about them.
Literary paradoxes
The literary paradox is also a self-contradictory statement, but its elements are focused on emotion and non-logical truths.
Unlike a logical paradox, there is a solution to a literary paradox. That’s largely because literary paradoxes have one key factor missing from logical paradoxes: context. Logical paradoxes stand on their own and need no background information to consider them. Literary paradoxes exist in the world of a specific story; that story is where we get our answer.
Let’s take a look at a few literary paradoxes and see how they use contradiction to say something about the story.
From George Orwell’s Animal Farm:
“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
It includes two statements: “all animals are equal” and “some are more equal than others.” The second of which denies the first. The solution to this paradox points at the theme of the book: successful revolutionaries become the very authoritarians they replaced.
From the play Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde:
“I can resist everything except temptation.”
This tongue-in-cheek line from Lord Darlington points out the nature of temptation. The only tempting thing is temptation; nothing lies behind it but the call. You could say the same of fear: there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.
From the song “When You Believe” by Stephen Schwartz in The Prince of Egypt (1998):
“Though hope is frail, it’s hard to kill.”
Considering this literary paradox leads to the understanding that the statements are not actually contradictory at all. Hope is both fragile and yet hard to kill. The truth in this paradox tells us something about the nature of hope.
From the titular paradox in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22
The Catch-22 is a way to keep soldiers in the war. Here’s the explanation in the book:
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
There’s a delight in the absurdity of this paradox, and that absurdity is a part of the truth it points to. Part of the book’s message is that war is a type of socially acceptable insanity. It makes people insane and treats peace as insane, which is absurd.
Your story weapon: Sharing truth through paradox
A great paradox is both confounding and beautiful. It reminds us that there are limits to what logic can capture and that some aspects of truth are inherently contradictory. Language and argument are shorthands; they can never fully explain what they’re attempting to explain.
As Dante says, “I cannot describe what I have seen, but I will spend my whole life trying to do so.”
The gift of writing is that attempting to do so is worth it. You’ll grow your mind and the minds of your readers. You connect them to truths you’ve seen and enter a world of writers just like you. Whether the paradoxes you write are logical or literary, don’t be afraid to contradict yourself in this way. If anything, that’s a sign that you’re on the right path.
Paradox reminds us that storytelling often lives beyond simple logic, in the tension between opposing ideas. If you are interested in exploring deeper tools of craft, join one of my next workshops: The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, Story Day.
