Truth Vs Historical Truth Analysis

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In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien distinguishes between two kinds of truth-happening truth and story truth. Happening truth is the events that actually took place and are true, the unbiased skeleton. However, story truth is adding fictional substance to the bones of the truth, by adding more details that are not necessarily false but not exactly true and show the perspective of the soldiers. Story truth is a more effective way than historical truth to tell about the Vietnam War because it shows how the war was actually viewed by some of the soldiers. Historical truth is only pure facts and sometimes in order to really comprehend what actually took place a little exaggeration is needed.
Although story truth is more effective in telling about the war than historical truth, textbooks still present a valid perspective about the war. Textbooks gives a taste at how people at home in America were affected by the war. When Nixon was elected into office his “first burning need was to quiet the public uproar over …show more content…

The chapter starts off with extensive details of the body. “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone...his other eye was a star shaped hole…” (6) The details gradually increase as the chapter goes on. Tim could not stop staring at what he had done, he couldn’t even speak, just stare. He began to imagine the person’s life story. “...from his earliest boyhood the man I killed would have listened to stories about the heroic Trung sisters...he would’ve been taught that to defend the land was a man’s highest duty and highest privilege...He was not a fighter...He liked books.” In a way, the man is Tim himself. His life being cut short by the war. Not really supporting the war but fighting because it’s apart of his national pride. Kiowa tried to get O’Brien away from the body. He coerced him many times but Tim just sat and stared at what he had done to this person’s

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