Hegenauer1

Haley Hegenauer

Jackie Justice

English 112

May 3, 2019

Trust:

The Greatest Killer, and The Greatest Companion

Most things in life are built on trust. It is inevitable for humans considering that humans

are individualistic. If we were all the same, trust would not be necessary because we would all be

thinking the same way, and there would be no creativity or new ideas. Trust gives us a way to all

share the world and believe in each other that we are all doing our best to be happy and help the

world move forward. While this system of trust and individual freedom is beneficial to the world

as a whole, and the people living in it, it is not a perfect system. When trust is put into someone,

and they do not deliver, therefore breaking that trust, it hurts the person the bestowed that trust,

and the one that was trusted. This applies to individual and social relationships. In everyday life,

trust can hurt people because we all put in at least some trust that the people around us that we

will not harm another and follow the law. This also applies in literature, for instance, in the story

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, the main character Connie trusted that the

people around her were people that would not hurt her and would follow the law. Then it only

took one person to break that trust and the law by later going to her house to hurt her. The idea of

trust and positives and negatives of trust are often demonstrated in literature through stories that

can be similar to the scenarios mentioned before. Literature shows us that trust is a double-edged

sword.
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In the story “Little Man” by Michael Cunningham, we see the fairy tale

“Rumpelstiltskin” through the viewpoint of Rumpelstiltskin. Throughout this story the girl that

needs Rumpelstiltskin’s help trusts him to take care of spinning the straw into gold, and

Rumpelstiltskin trusts that the girl will keep her promise when she says that she will give him

something for helping her each time. This trust helps the girl tremendously, but in the end it also

hurts Rumpelstiltskin. Earlier in the story, Rumpelstiltskin did not want anything from the girl,

and he was going to help her out of kindness, but then the girl offers to give him a necklace for

helping her, so this turned to greed where Rumpelstiltskin then wants more, and trusts that she

will give what she wants to him. This form of trust is introduced in the line, “Glad to be of

service,” you answer.

“I should go now.” “Let me give you something”(Cunningham). The girl gives Rumpelstiltskin

something from her after he had helped her by spinning the straw into gold. This establishes a

give and take relationship where Rumpelstiltskin helps the girl by spinning straw into gold and

the girl gives him something from the little that she has. This give and take relationship is built

on the trust that Rumpelstiltskin will be able to spin the straw into gold, and the girl will be able

to provide him with some sort of reward. Later, this trust is broken because the girl accepts

Rumpelstiltskin's demands for him to help her one last time, but when it came down to it, she

refuses to give up what she has. Rumpelstiltskin wants her first born child in exchange for him to

spin the largest room of straw into gold. The girl accepts this, so Rumplestiltskin spins the straw

into gold to help her, and because he trusts that he will get his reward. The girl has deeply

benefitted from the trust she has in Rumpelstiltskin by becoming queen for the straw being spun

to gold, but Rumpelstiltskin has been hurt by this trust because it was broken when the girl

refuses to give up her child. When Rumpelstiltskin comes to get the child the girl says, “ She
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says, “Please reconsider”(Cunningham). When Rumpelstiltskin does not get the child he was

promised, the trust he had put into the girl ends up hurting him, while the girl benefits from this.

The girl becomes a queen and has a child because of this trust, while Rumpelstiltskin does not

get any of his true desires, and ends up ripping himself in half out of his anger and frustration.

Trust hurts one person and helps the other.

Another piece of literature that portrays that trust is a double edged sword is the story

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates. In this story a girl

named Connie goes out with a guy she doesn’t know one night, and another guy, named Arnold

Friend, sees her and finds out who she is and then comes to her house the next day. When he

comes to her house, he tries to force her to come with him where Connie knows that trouble will

be waiting, so she refuses. After a while of Arnold pestering her and threatening her, Connie

eventually agrees to go with him. Connie had trusted herself the night before that she would be

fine, and therefore ignored the dangers that would come with going out with a stranger. Oates

introduces when she decides to go with the stranger with the line, “So they went out to his

car…”(887). This is the point in the story that Connie decides to trust herself, and the boy named

Eddie that she was with that night. Connie decides to trust herself because she feels rebellious

against her mother and sister that often scold her for not being the perfect child her sister is.

Connie feels that she is not as loved by her parents as her sister is because of her behavior. So

Connie likes to do things that might be dangerous, and that would be looked down on by her

mother because of this feeling of rebellion, and because she wants to do something that sounds

dangerous and fun. These feelings of rebellion and urge to take action to have an exciting time

gives Connie a more clouded vision for what she would normally trust that is safe enough to

engage in, therefore making it easier for Connie to trust herself to go out and have fun. Connie’s
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rebellious feelings can be seen in the line, “...she was so plain and chunky and steady that Connie

had to hear her praised all the time by her mother and her mother’s sisters”(886). This line refers

to Connie’s sister, and how Connie listens to her sister getting praise by her mother, which leads

to Connie’s feelings of spitefulness and feelings of rebellion against her sister and mother. The

positive thing that Connie got out of the trust that she put in that night, was that she had the time

of her life that night with everything she did with going out to get food, and just being with a

stranger gave her the thrill of doing what she wasn’t supposed to. On the other hand, the next day

she got a worse negative effect of that trust when Arnold Friend came to her house. If Connie

had not gone out the night before she would have never met Arnold Friend, and therefore she

wouldn’t have had to go with him for him to do whatever he wanted with her. The trust that she

put in herself gave her what she wanted from the night out, but also put her in danger later on

which she had not accounted for. When we put trust in ourselves and others there is a risk that

must be accounted for while it is not always accounted for since we often focus on what we can

gain from that trust.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, proves that trust can be harmful.

In this story, a woman is suffering from postpartum depression. Her husband, named John, is a

physician, and he is giving her instructions to try to improve her health, and one of the things that

she has to do is be in this room with yellow wallpaper that she hates and loves. This yellow

wallpaper seems to drive her crazy, and all she wants to do is break free from it. The woman

trusts John in the beginning, and that is what ends up hurting her. Early on in the story the

woman states, “My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same

thing. So I take phosphates or phosphites, whichever it is, and tonic, and journeys, and air, and

exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to work until I am well again”(648). This line refers to
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how her brother and John are both saying the same thing about how she is not really sick, and

that she is just having some temporary nervous depression, so they give her some form of

treatment, but it may not be what she actually needs. The woman is trusting John and her brother

enough that she is accepting the treatment that they give her, and the treatment is not helping her

very well. As the story goes on, the woman trusts John less and less, and by the end she believes

that John does not know anything about her condition and breaks free from the treatment. When

she broke away from John, the woman was then able to start to help herself. After she was able

to escape from the room, at that point she was very ill, but then she was able to reclaim some

form of freedom. By not trusting John, the woman is able to gain back the freedom that she has

lost from trusting John, because when the woman trusts what John has told her about her

condition, the woman continues to stay locked away, and not being able to do what she wants.

When the woman stops trusting John, she is able to break free by escaping, and is not being

controlled by John anymore. Sometimes when we trust people the way the woman trusted John,

we can be harmed if we do not question what that trust will do to us.

Wit by Margaret Edson, illustrates that trust can help someone, and hurt them. In this play

a woman named Vivian Bearing has advanced metastatic ovarian cancer. Trust is something is

this story that both helps Vivian and hurts her. Vivian believes that she is getting properly

informed, and therefore she is giving informed consent. Throughout her treatment the doctors

have left her under the impression that she has a good chance of surviving through the

chemotherapy and that she can beat the cancer. Vivian also trusts her nurse, Susie, who ends up

helping her. By trusting Susie, Vivian is able to get a straight answer about her condition. This is

displayed in the lines,

VIVIAN:”My cancer is not being cured, is it”

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SUSIE:“Huh-uh”(20).

This is the point in the play when Vivian decides that the doctors methods should not be trusted

because these methods are too much for her body to handle, and therefore doing more harm than

good. Vivian realizes that Susie is the person that can be trusted to tell her the truth because

Susie is the one that cares about her as a person. Susie then goes on to explain how the doctors

thought the drugs would help shrink the tumor, and while that did happen, the cancer had spread,

and that there really isn’t a cure for her cancer at that time. By trusting Susie, Vivian has made a

human connection that she desired, and she was is to get a straight answer about her condition so

she can make a decision about what she wants to do next. On the contrary, when Vivian trusts

the doctors, she is being researched on while being told that this will help her, while she is

actually dying from the chemotherapy, and the cancer. Trust causes Vivian to go through a lot of

physical pain that isn’t going to help her in the end, but trust also gives her an emotional

connection to another person, which was something that Vivian had not experienced before.

Each of these pieces of literature, the author depicts some way that trust can affect us.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” shows how trust

can be harmful, while “Wit” and “Little Man” illustrate how trust can be helpful as well as

harmful. In our own lives trust is a double-edged sword that is active in our everyday lives. Trust

is something that is needed for humans to coexist, but it can also be our downfall. People need to

trust each other to benefit from another and having a mutually beneficial relationship. It is human

nature to trust others for personal gain, but it is also human nature to be skeptical of that trust.

We are often skeptical that someone else is also trusting us for personal gain, but that they will

harm us to gain even more from us. For example, in a simple give and take deal, it would be

mutually beneficial for each party to give something up and take something, but it would be
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more beneficial for both sides to take something, and keep what they already had. We are quick

to trust people to help ourselves, but we are also quick to question others when we stop and think

about what they could do. This then creates mistrust which can cause one or both parties to try to

just help ourselves. Trust becomes a double-edged sword when someone breaks that trust, so the

one who broke the trust benefits from it, while the one who trusted is hurt. In the end, trust is

something that we all need because we all need other people to live, and trusting others can help

us greatly, but we need to be careful about who we trust, and to what extent we trust them,

otherwise, trust can be our downfall.

Works Cited
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Cunningham, Michael. “‘Little Man.’” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 10 July 2017,

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/10/little-man.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Yellow Wallpaper. Simon & Brown, 2018.

Edson, Margaret. “Wit”. Studio Theatre, 2019.

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”. Literature, The Human

Experience, Abcarian, Klotz, Cohen, 1970, 886-898.