Truman Burbank is the fictional main character of the movie "The Truman Show." The Truman Show is a voyeuristic reality TV show directed by a man who considers himself an artist, Christof. The show takes place in the largest set ever created, a small town called Seahaven, which is inside a huge dome, then second man-made construction that is visible from space. Everything in Seahaven is controlled, everybody but Truman is an actor, each playing a role in Truman's life; his wife, friends, co-workers are all actors, everyone knows they are the star of the internationally broadcasted show, except Truman.
"Nothing here is fake, there is nothing false about the Truman show, it's merely controlled" says Truman's best friend Marlon.
Raised in the perfect town, exposed intentionally to nothing evil, Truman is a cliché. Everything he says has been created for him through his life to the point he is almost like one of the actors. Broadcast live, 24 hours a day 365 days a year, The Truman Shows cast is the same population of a small country, and they believe theirs is a truly blessed existance.
To raise revenue to fund the show there is product placement, everything on the show can be purchased, from the clothes they wear to the foods they eat.
As a child, Truman was restricted to certain areas of the set to keep maintinence down, as the set was still being built, an example of this can be seen when a young Truman attempts to climb a wall of rocks at the beach, and is stopped by his father who tells him "you have to know your limitations."
Truman's limitation is one of the themes of the film, with teachers, parents, and friends discouraging him from doing anything adventurous since his childhood, they warn him of the perils of places outside Seahaven.
Up until his mid 30s Truman hadn't been outside Seahaven, and had no great desire to, holidays had been faked for him as a child. One day Truman decided he wanted to get away, to go to Fiji; "You can't get any further before you start coming back," he exclaims to Marlon.
Less than subtle obstacles stop Truman from going anywhere, for example posters of planes crashing at the travel agent, and a bus that convieniently breaks down when he tries to get to Chicago. Eventually, Truman decides to up and go. With his wife, Meryl, in the car he tries to outdo the cued traffic that stops him, then gets to the bridge across to what is supposed to be the mainland stops him, Truman's father died in a boating accident when he was a child, which has inspired a fear of water in him ever since. However, today, instead of making an excuse to get away from the water, he plants his foot determindly on the accelerator and forces his wife to steer across the bridge.
After this ordeal, Truman faces a bushfire, and then a nuclear hazard which stops him. Or so the audience thinks until he jumps out of his car and tries to run for it, but is stopped by nuclear workers.
This oppression makes Truman even more determined to escape, as he senses something is wrong. The next week Truman tricks the cameras by sneaking out of his house and leaving a plush doll under his blankets to make it appear that he is sleeping, Truman then takes a sailing boat and faces harsh storm conditions that Christof creates to stop him, and sails to the end of his world, where he runs into the wall of the set. Upon doing this Truman alights from the boat, and literally touches the sky where the edge of the set is painted on, this symbolises Truman's conquest of his fear and shows him that the sky's the limit.
At this point, Truman discovers stairs out of the set, and as he slowly climbs them Christof has one final attempt to keep him there, telling Truman he knows him better than Truman knows himself, to which Truman replies "you never had a camera in my head."
Truman then finds the set door, and exits with a bow and the end of his clichéd greeting "...In case I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!" Then he smiles and exits The Truman Show.