Sylvia is the actress who plays Lauren Garland, a girl from Truman’s high school. She was originally Truman’s love interest, but she was left in the background once Truman’s wife became his new love interest. Truman is still infatuated with Sylvia, which leads her to have a certain power over him. At one point in the film, the two characters are on a beach when Sylvia tries to tell Truman the truth about his reality. She took a risk and ultimately paid the price of being kicked off of the island, and consequently, the show. After her release from the show, she called into The Truman Show to speak to Christof, the director. She quickly made accusations against him for keeping Truman in a synthetic environment. Her advocacy for Truman is unique, as no one else mentioned in the movie has such strong feelings towards Truman’s release. Her advocacy for Truman to find out the truth faces strong opposition. In this sense, Sylvia’s ideas of what is good do not match the definition of good for the viewers of The Truman Show, along with the director, Christof. As William James writes in Pragmatism, “The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons” (James 37). Sylvia believes that telling Truman about the show is a good thing; therefore she makes statements to Truman that he perceives to be true. James goes on to explain that if good ideas weren’t true, then they would not exist to begin with. Due to the truth in Sylvia’s assertions about Truman’s false reality, they must consequently be good.
Sylvia embodies William James’ Pragmatism because her statements ultimately correspond with actual events. Truman never doubted that his reality wasn’t real. However, Sylvia saying “Listen to me: Everybody knows about you. Everybody knows everything you do. They’re pretending, Truman. Do you understand? Everybody’s pretending!” leads Truman to become more aware of his surroundings. He begins to investigate the reasoning behind their strange behaviors, only to find that what Sylvia said was true. This brings her statement, as well as James’ theory, full circle. Truman’s findings verified Sylvia’s statement, making him fully aware that his reality was not genuine.
When Sylvia says “Everything I’ve told you is the truth!”, she is alluding to Truman’s false reality. This relates to James’ ideas when he writes “ideas that tell us which of them to expect count as the true ideas in all this primary sphere of verification, and the pursuit of such ideas is a primary human duty” (James 93). Sylvia’s quest to expose the truth about Truman’s life is following the theories explained by James. James also writes “we live in a world of realities that can be infinitely useful or infinitely harmful” (James 93). Sylvia’s determinism can be seen as her trying to show Truman how his reality is infinitely harmful. He cannot be kept in a bubble all his life and not realize that everything in his life is synthetic. Sylvia is an influential character that should be revered for her efforts in trying to expose this important truth.
Christina Dell’Orto
The Truman Show & Philosophy 