Truth In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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In life people are taught to always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Lying is morally wrong which is why most people avoid it. Writers, on the other hand, find honesty not only unnecessary, but damaging. Therefore, “lying” or “twisting reality” is the only alternative if not the better one. Avoiding the full truth is incredibly beneficial to a story because of what it provides for the reader.
The truth plays little to no part in a truly good story. Mostly, there is one main difference between good stories and bad ones; the use of facts. Poor storytellers get hung up on every inane detail of the truth, good storytellers provide room for interpretation by the reader (McLeod). By focusing more on feeling and not the truth, readers are able to connect more with a story. If the pure facts are predominant, a story becomes too exact, boring even. In Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried,” Tim remembers his friend Norman wanting Tim to write a story about him. The first version ended up being a disappointment, so Tim rewrote it and said “The piece has been substantially revised, …show more content…

In fact, “The brain fills in information that was not there” from inference or speculation (Fraser). Nothing the human brain remembers is 100% true, it is incapable of storing that much detail. Every memory is a story constructed from fragments of fact, the rest is all made up. For example, memory researcher Daniel L. Schacter states that the brain "Knit[s] together the relevant fragments and feelings into a coherent narrative or story” in order to store them as memories (Murphy & Doherty). It is impossible for someone to tell a completely factual story unless it was written in the moment. All “true” stories are only based on the truth because the ones that are true aren’t worth telling. There is no such thing as an honest memory or a true

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