What is your definition of truth? Everyone has a different definition of truth. Truth to me is something that is an actual fact. Fitzgerald says “I don't care about truth. I want some happiness.”. Hansberry opinion on truth is “ Perhaps I will be a great man... I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of truth and find my way always with the right course.”. Another opinion of truth from O’Brien, “I want you to know how I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth.”. There are many different thoughts on the question, “What is truth?”. So today I will explain why my definition of truth is the one that is the most accurate.
Fitzgerald describes truth as if it isn't of much importance in our lives. He
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When hs called to war he doesn't want to deal with it.so he runs off towards canada but he has to try to decide on whether or not he wants to go to canada or to the war. He finally decides to go to the war because he thought the truth was that everyone would think he's a coward for not doing it. So the truth of his cowardice led him to make the decision that could be considered “the right course in life” like hanberry talked about. Another quote that would support hansberry's definition of truth is “Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should’ve done.”(ch. 1 pg.5). In this chapter Lieutenant jimmy cross is looking at martha's photos and thinking about how he should’ve tried to be with her. She didn't love him back. The truth of her not loving him back might have helped him go down the right path of going to war. The truth might lead you down the right path whether it hurts or not. If the truth is a fact then it will lead you down the right path like hansberry thinks. I think that as long as it's the real truth you can do with it what you …show more content…
I think that O’Brien’s interpretation of truth is erroneous. Something isn't the substantial truth if it didn't really happen in real life. A quote that supports my point of view on O’Brien’s evaluation of truth is “It's safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true.”(ch.7 pg.82) Someone might not know the real truth and might have built some fictional story in their mind and made them self think it's true. But if it didn't really happen then it didn't happen and it's not true. That's all there's to it. Another quote that supports my idea is “It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite; he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.”(ch.9 pg.89) People sometimes use the truth and add some untruthful details only to make it more interesting. Even though people do that they shouldn't. If you're trying to tell the truth you have to tell the entire truth and not add anything else. If you're telling a true story it has to be true. That's why O’Brien’s interpretation of truth is
The Student Guide to Liberal Learning encourages apprentices to consider the significance of what is truth? James Schall, explains the nature of the universe as an open door to seek guidance through the knowledge of the great thinkers as an attempt to better comprehend the ultimate truth of our reality as a whole, to understand how things perfectly align with each other and how to find the ultimate truth that humanity continuously seeks. Furthermore, Schall states that: “…the truth comes from reality itself, from what is. Truth is our judgment about reality.” Schall lays out the initial quest as form of “clear knowledge of truth” while he persuades to stimulate and spark the curiosity of students to seek his or her own truth of reality through a two-step process:
He gives specific reasoning, such as “a true war story is never moral” and “a true war story cannot be believed.” This ties into this chapter, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” when O’Brien states that Rat Kiley had a tendency to exaggerate his stories, so the credibility of his story is already tarnished. Despite Kiley’s pleas stating that his story is absolutely true, this doesn’t stop O’Brien and the other soldiers from subconsciously “subtracting superlatives, figuring the square root of an absolute, and then multiplying by maybe.” This metaphor created by O’Brien tells that the platoon did not think of Kiley’s stories as completely fiction, but that they understood Rat’s tendency to “heat up the truth… you would feel exactly as he felt.” Kiley tells the story in a hyperbolic fashion because he has an emotional connection to the story, and it’s hard to believe because he makes the story sound too crazy to have
Think that O'Brien is still suffering from what he experienced in Vietnam and he uses his writing to help him deal with his conflicts. In order to deal with war or other traumatic experiences, you sometimes just have to relive the experiences over and over. This is what O'Brien does with his writing; he expresses his emotional truths even if it means he has to change the facts of the literal truth. The literal truth, or some of the things that happen during war, are so horrible that you don't want to believe that it could've actually happened. For instance, "[o]ne colonel wanted the hearts cut out of the dead Vietcong to feed to his dog..
...r because it seems impossible to reconstruct an event from this objective point of view. Maybe the point of telling stories is not trying to recreate the reality of a past event, but it is the message that matters because that might be in the end the only thing that does not necessarily depend on single details of the story, but on the overall picture of an event. That is why to O’Brien another important component of a war story is the fact that a war story will never pin down the definite truth and that is why a true war story “never seems to end” (O’Brien, 425). O’Brien moves the reader from the short and simple statement “This is the truth” to the conclusion that, “In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nohting much is ever very true” (O’Brien, 428). These two statements frame the entire irony of the story, from its beginning to its end. Almost like the popular saying “A wise man admits that he knows nothing.”
What O’Brien sees as the purpose of the storytelling, and fictionalizing his experiences in Vietnam, can be seen through the “style” of his writing. It’s more than just a collection of stories. It’s a way for him to let go and start a new beginning. It is labeled “fiction” to make the story seem more engaging and to bring up the question, “Did this really happen?”
He states that as a soldier, there is so much to soak in from war scenes that it all becomes a muddled mess. Therefore, the story of the moment can be different from each soldier’s perspective due to the parts where each man puts in his own ideas. This leads to some speculation as to whether or not O’Brien’s stories are true or false.
The truth to any war does not lie in the depths of storytelling but rather it’s embedded in every person involved. According to O’Brien, “A true war story does not depend on that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (pg. 80). Truths of any war story in my own opinion cannot be fully conveyed or explained through the use of words. Any and all war stories provide specific or certain facts about war but each of them do not and cannot allow the audience to fully grasp the tru...
He admits that some parts of his writing are made up, and he is intentionally vague about the truthfulness of other parts. When asked if he had ever killed anyone, O’Brien said that he could reply, honestly, with both “Of course not,” and “Yes” (172). He explains that even the guilt of being present when the kill took place was enough that it doesn’t matter if he himself threw the grenade or not, he would feel the same way. It doesn’t matter the exact events that took place; this story is about how he felt about seeing murder up close and personal. O’Brien explains that “by telling stories, you objectify your own experience... You pin down certain truths. You make up others” (152). Writing was a way to verbalize his past, and he told the vague details how he experienced them, if not necessarily how they happened. He was able to separate himself from his memories and remorse allowing himself to cope with his past in the war. While the reader will never know the exact truth, they can still understand the guilt and that O’Brien felt as a
In “Telling the Truth” by Jon Volkmer, he compares The Things They Carried to another war story. He points out that when O’Brien tells the truth it is more of an individual one instead of the one of an event or group. Which makes sense because in every story he tells the outcome is different. Sometimes from another person or sometimes from himself. Each of his stories is changed based on his perspective and what he remembers, so it makes sense that his truth’s are individual. He also states how O 'Brien spends his time picking the truth apart about war. This could be of a couple different reasons, like his trouble remembering what happened, or how he depicts the truth from fiction. Mr. Volkmer says how O’Brien was always trying to quote on quote “ pull the rug out from underneath the reader” when he was telling a story. It is definitely true that O’Brien was trying to do that throughout the whole novel. If he was doing that, he did a great job because every story he told was believable and it painted a vivid picture in your head about what happened. Then at the end he would just stab you in the heart with something about it not being true or he did not
...ents a story truth, one that tells the truth in regards to sensation and emotion. This is represented when the narrator says “makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard exact truth”(O’Brien pg. 68). O’Brien shows that it matters not that a story is fiction, so long as it represents the truth as it seemed.
O’Brien gives the reader an example of a true war story when he tells of the soldier that jumped on a grenade to save his friends however the grenade took all their lives away. On page 61, O'Brien states that this is a true war story that never happened. This is a true war story because it fits his criteria about how a war story should be but the story never actually happens. This is a true war story because it is sad because shows loss despite the soldier’s effort to save his
Lies are a treacherous thing, yet everyone tells a few lies during their lifetime. Deceit surrounds us all the time; even when one reads classic literature. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald makes dishonesty a major theme in his novel The Great Gatsby. The falsehoods told by the characters in this novel leads to inevitable tragedy when the truth is revealed.
...hers might say. He tells our narrator, “The most important thing in the world is knowing the truth.” He goes on to remark, “The whole truth and nothing but the truth” (Mahfouz, 69). In this story, the Truth had a positive affect on the character. It gave him a new sort of freedom. He had gained a new sense of identity because of his new knowledge, and this evoked a sense of happiness in him.
And it doesn't matter one bit. The writer isn't interested in truth, lies or anything of the sort. He's interested in reality, and the reality of human truth is that no one will ever really know it.
This allows the reader to see what takes place rather than what is perceived. O’Brien’s main objective is to expose the subjectivity that lies within truth. To point out a specific contradiction within truth, he uses war to highlight this difference. He writes, “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty” (77). The truth has two different meanings and it all depends on who is interpreting it. One person may think one truth and another person can see the complete opposite. To go along with this ambiguity within truth he states, “Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true” (77). He once again shows that truth is up for interpretation. There is not a single, universal truth, however, there are many variations of it. As previously mentioned, O’Brien claims that he honestly admit that he has both never killed a man and has in fact killed somebody. Here he is stating that there can be completely different answers that all seem to be the truthful. Whether or not O’Brien killed someone, he felt like he did, but could answer that he didn’t. It is this discrepancy that proves that it is all relative. When it comes to telling the story it becomes “difficult difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen,” (67). This is what causes the subjectivity, the unknowingness of the situation. Since