The Meaning of the Liar Paradox in Randall Jarrell's "Eighth Air Force"

Abstract

Do logical paradoxes, like Eubulides's liar paradox (the claim that "I am now lying" is true if and only if it is false), have any "existential" significance or are they mere brain puzzles for the mathematically minded? This paper argues that Randall Jarrell's poem "Eighth Air Force" contains a poetic use of Eubulides's liar paradox, spoken by Pontius Pilate's wife in her statements about the "murder" of Jesus, in order to capture, symbolically, the inherent universal duplicity (inauthenticity) of human life, specifically, the fact that human life, even in its true statements, is an inseparable blend of "truth" and "lies.