Mikel Kota ENG 130 Professor Carella 17 November 2014 Story Truth vs. Happening Truth in The Things They Carried The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a complex piece of literature and understanding it can be approached many different ways. The story in this book is told in both the first and the third person. This creates a mixture of viewpoints and character perspectives that would not be possible otherwise. The Things They Carried is a fictional story based on the author's real life experience. In evidence to that, its mainly a fictional story because its made up but it’s also considered as an autobiography because of real life experiences. Primarily, truth in storytelling stands out as the strongest theme in the novel, for it is called …show more content…
upon and discussed by O’Brien himself many times in the novel. In this paper I will argue that truth is a relative term, the author shows this when he says it’s about making you feel not about telling an accurate account of his tale. Initially you as the reader should have an awareness between story truth and happening truth. Because O’Brien felt in order to tell his story, he first needed to simplify his experiences. O’Brien did this by inventing characters and situations that evokes the same emotions and struck the same nerve. But he changed enough info so that he could tell a good story and still get the emotional ramifications of his experiences across to the reader. That evidences why story truth proves a real presence by using specific facts to support the cause. The happening truth lies on the same aspect except for the fact that it is less emotionally striking for the reader. The fact that emotions are embedded in the story is what makes story truth more affective. The biggest problem by this is that the reader faces the battle of figuring out what the theme of the story is rather than the true or untrue events that their required to feel for through the text. Also, another reason why story truth is more useful than happening truth is because it stresses a connection between the collections of the stories. The single happening truth’s stand on their own, with no real connection of constructing a solid conclusion. O’Brien uses a mixture of recalling on certain stories through out the novel. This causes confusion for the reader because it is impossible to create the connection that is clear once you’ve read the whole novel. In actuality, towards the end of the novel O’Brien gives us the idea of story truth and happening truth himself. O’Brien states: I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I’m left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief. Here is the story truth. He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of bout twenty. He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye was a star-shaped hole. I killed him. (O’Brien 171-172). O’Brien states this so that the reader can reflect upon the two different ways of approaching the event he’s telling, and not only for this one time but throughout the whole novel. The more detailed story truth version and the happening truth version of the dead man in My Khe are given before he distinguishes the difference between them. Mainly this is to determine how these two versions are apart from each other in meaning. To set these truths apart from each other, O’Brien states, “What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.”(172). O’Brien’s main goal is to show how the story truth is more effective than the happening truth. More than once we come to notice this connection occurring in the novel. It becomes obvious that it’s the whole novel itself. One specific example I have been able to construe a meaning of through the story truth and happening truth is Kiowa’s death. Kiowa was one of O’Brien’s closest friends in the war; in fact he was his “bunker buddy”. They slept in the same bunker; they fought together and most importantly took care of each other. Throughout the novel we come to understand that Kiowa was of great importance to Tim and that his death made a huge impact on O’Brien’s life. O’Brien slowly connects all the evidence and he explains more about Kiowa’s death towards the end of the book. In the chapter Notes, O’Brien makes an comment about the book that he was writing for Norman Bowker, O’Brien said “Beyond that, though something about the story had frightened me—I was afraid to speak directly, afraid to remember—and in the end the piece had been ruined by a failure to tell the full precise truth about our night in the shit field.”(153). What O’Brien is trying to do here is essential. In essence, he’s making an attempt to say that something had to have been altered in the story of Kiowa’s death that makes it true and he felt that it had to have been true to be of full value. Here, we see story truth to be more effective than happening truth. Shortly after that O’Brien seems to confess who is responsible for Kiowa’s death, but it is not as clear as we want it to be to make an actual distinction. O’Brien states: Kiowa, after all, had been a close friend and for years I’ve avoided thinking about his death and my own complicity in it. Even here it’s not easy. In the interests of truth, however, I want to make it clear that Norman Bowker was in no way responsible for what happened to Kiowa. Norman did not freeze up or lose the Silver Star for valor. That part of the story is my own. (154). Analyzing O’Brien’s own words about the responsibility of Kiowa’s death it is strong evidence of who became responsible of it in O’Brien’s own words “my own complicity in it”. Later in the next chapter In the Field Tim gives the full story of Kiowa’s death. The next piece of evidence will make it clear that story truth can be more evident than happening truth but that’s only when we make it available and do the tying in of connections ourselves. In the next chapter In the Field O’Brien gives us the story of Kiowa’s death in detail.
It should be obvious that the story of Kiowa’s death can only be true if O’Brien was present. O’Brien introduces us to a person he refers to as boy, O’Brien says “Not a man, really—a boy.”(156). Why does O’Brien refer to this solider in the same platoon that we know nothing about as “boy”? In story truth, enough evidence has to be given to the reader to make the story true but not everything that makes it a happening. It would be educational to make a guess at saying this “boy” is someone we have already heard about or maybe even O’Brien himself and he’s afraid to say his own name. Since we can’t prove this without any evidence, O’Brien can prove it with his story. Later in the chapter In the Field, O’Brien states: At one point, the boy remembered, he’d been showing Kiowa a picture of his girlfriend. He remembered switching on his flashlight. A stupid thing to do, but he did it anyway, and he remembered Kiowa leaning in for a look at the picture—“Hey, she’s cute,” he’d said—and then the field exploded all around them. (163). Right away who is the boy—the boy that carried the picture of his girlfriend and the boy that shared the same bunker as Kiowa—the boy was Tim
O’Brien? We cannot know for sure the truth of what actually happened to Tim in Vietnam. We can infer and deduce that it greatly effected him and it was at once a story he felt needed to be shared and a story that needed to be reconfigured to communicate the emotional parts as honestly as he could. The truth in this is relative, meaning it is not dependent on anything real or based in reality and nothing is really reliant on memory or the actual facts. The people and things could be changed or exaggerated to get the emotional atmosphere right, mainly to stimulate the appropriate response in the reader. But for all intensive purposes the truth for the author is based on the emotional factors, much more than any factual or happening truths. Works Cited O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Boston: Mariner Books, 2009. Print.
The Things They Carried represents a compound documentary novel written by a Vietnam veteran, Tim O'Brien, in whose accounts on the Vietnam war one encounters graphical depictions of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Thus, the stories "Speaking of Courage," "The Man I Killed," "How to Tell a True War Story," "Enemies" and "Friends," "Stockings," and "The Sweetheart of The Song Tra Bong "all encompass various examples of PTSD.
Tina Chen’s critical essay provides information on how returning soldiers aren’t able to connect to society and the theme of alienation and displacement that O’Brien discussed in his stories. To explain, soldiers returning from war feel alienated because they cannot come to terms with what they saw and what they did in battle. Next, Chen discusses how O’Brien talks about soldiers reminiscing about home instead of focusing in the field and how, when something bad happens, it is because they weren’t focused on the field. Finally, when soldiers returned home they felt alienated from the country and
The Things They Carry: Character Changes. One of the main points in The Things They Carry, by Tim O’Brien, is that war changes people. This is evident in the behavior of Norman Bowker, Bob “Rat” Kiley, and the character Tim O’Brien. They each started out as kind young men, but near the end had become very distraught.
In the book “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien uses imagery, figurative language and repetition to convey his message. O’Brien’s purpose for story telling, is to clear his conscience of war and to tell the stories of soldiers who were forgotten by society. Many young men were sent to war, despite opposing it. They believed it was “wrong” to be sent to their deaths. Sadly, no one realizes a person’s significance until they die. Only remembering how they lived rather than acknowledging their existence when they were alive.
I wonder what it was like to witness the Vietnam War firsthand in combat. Well, in the short story, “The Things they Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, the theme was portrayed as the physical and emotional burdens that soldiers had to deal with during the Vietnam War.
The Things They Carried is a funny little book in the sense that it isn’t told how most books are. It goes from war to camping on the borderline of Canada, back to war, and then into present day times. It works marvelously well, showing you what actually happened and then what he thought about what happened and what he could have done to change the outcome. There are many things that I think people can learn from his experiences in the Vietnam war and the way he tells those stories and lessons really bring you along for the ride.
The novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’ Brien takes place in the Vietnam War. The protagonist, Lieutenant Cross, is a soldier who is madly in love with a college student named Martha. He carries around photos and letters from her. However, the first few chapters illustrate how this profound love makes him weak in the war.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a very uniquely written book. This book is comprised of countless stories that, though are out of order, intertwine and capture the reader’s attention through the end of the novel. This book, which is more a collection of short stories rather than one story that has a beginning and an end, uses a format that will keep the reader coming back for more.
The Things They Carried certainly succeeds in providing a far different literary experience, in many fields including its syntax. The “average conversation” feel the sentence structure provides makes the reader feel as though he/she is being told a story or even just having a conversation. O’Brien’s style of syntax is perfectly matches the story he tries to tell, and makes the book a viable read for anyone
Tim O’Brien’s, The Things they Carried is a riveting tale of struggle and sacrifice, self indulgence and self pity, and the intrapersonal battles that reeked havoc on even the most battle tested soldiers. O’Brien is able to express these ideas through eloquent writing and descriptive language that makes the reader feel as if he were there. The struggle to avoid cowardice is a prevailing idea in all of O’Brien’s stories.
The title of the book itself couldn’t be more fitting. The Things They Carried is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Tim O'Brien about soldiers trying to live through the Vietnam War. These men deal with many struggles and hardships. Throughout this essay I will provide insight into three of the the numerous themes seen throughout the novel: burdens, truth, and death.
In Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried,” imaginations can be both beneficial and corrosive. This novel consists of story, truth and real truth. Throughout the novel, imagination plays a big role. Tim O’Brien wrote his book about the war, mainly based on his memory of the war. He did not remember every detail of the war, thus he made up some false details to the stories to make it seem more interesting.
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is a wonderful and personal look into one of this countries darkest times. The vivid imagery that the author uses lets the reader actually experience the feeling of actually being in the war. By using the cultural studies method of literary criticism, we can use the social conditions during the time of the writing to explore beneath the surface. What we find underneath just might be more interesting than the story itself.
All humans experience the different weights of life, whether in the form of a heavy bag or a past memory. O’Brien begins The Things They Carried opens with a detailed description of each object a soldier in the Vietnam War carries on their back. These men carry their own weight of their heavy bags, intricate guns, medical supplies, among other items. In addition to the physical weight each soldier carries, the psychological weight of their experiences are also outlined. A typical soldier carries his uplifting hopes, crushing realities, or horrific experiences in the war, accumulating and changing these mental packages continuously. As the first chapter of The Things They Carried, the concept of the mental weight of the war is central to the overall theme of the novel. While it may be more comfortable to put down your mental bag and rest, the sheer horror of the war keeps each soldier with a heavy pack for the rest of their lives, only being able to relieve tension by
The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War that the author, Tim O’Brien, uses to convey his experiences and feelings about the war. The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O’Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. To O’Brien the novel is not only a compilation of stories, but also a release of the fears, sadness, and anger that he has felt because of the Vietnam War.