According to the author, Tim O’Brien many a true war story consists of many factors that are unknown to most people. For instance, Tim describes a true war story as that which is not moral. Tim claims that true war stories are not there to encourage ad that if you feel uplifted at the end of war story then that is not a true war story. He gives the example of a soldier named Rat. Rat’s fellow soldier and best friend died while they were playing in the forest on duty and Rat underwent much devastation and shock. In an attempt to seek solace at the death of his best friend he writes to the deceased’s only sister. The author tells us that rat poured his heart out in that letter and nearly broke down while writing it. He tells us how Rat described …show more content…
Tim claims that the normal stuff undergoes inclusion out of necessity since if a war story undergoes narration without the normal stuff then the listeners will find it hard to believe it. Tim then gives an instance of when one soldier tells him of an instance they had in the jungle. The soldier who narrates the story first starts with the normal stuff like how they had a mission to go out to the jungle and just listen. Then as the soldier is about to start telling the true war story he warns Tim that he just might not believe what he is about to tell him next. Then he explains how once while just listening out for any enemy activity in the jungle they heard some kind of cocktail party going on in the Jungle. They claim that it confused them since what they heard were not human voices but more of rocks that were talking. This was clearly an example of how crazy war stories were and how most people do not believe them. Tim further explains that they at times sound so unreal that one cannot tell them and one opts to keep it to themselves. This is clear when after the troops return their senior officer demands to know what really transpired out there but the soldiers could not
When the quote says “that part of the story is my own” it must mean O’Brien had taken some true details from personal stories. Could O’Brien taken true information but tried to throw the readers off to keep some privacy for the men the stories were based off? Some of the stories present within the book are completely out of the water. How could O’Brien imagine those ideas up without a base of what actually happened? I believe O’Brien switched the names of the soldiers but kept the stories. If he did the name switching it could emphasize on how the reader could focus on the ideas and situations, not the people. O’Brien would showcase how these situations can affect everyone. Another challenging aspect for me is if the stories are partly true why not honor those written about. Do the soldiers feel shame reading about their failures? O’Brien wrote his novel upon the hopes of helping his PTSD and it could have helped the veterans read and receive help. Along with help the vets it could supply the vets with the honor they
For young people, the Vietnam War is a thing of the past and they can
O Brien's point of view is an accurate one as he himself because he is a Vietnam veteran. The title of the short story is meaningful because it describes each soldier’s personality and how he handles conflict within the mind and outside of the body during times of strife. The title fits the life of a soldier perfectly because it shows the reality that war is more than just strategy and attacking of forces. O’Brien narrates the story from two points of view: as the author and the view of the characters. His style keeps the reader informed on both the background of things and the story itself at the same time.
Several stories into the novel, in the section, “How to tell a true war story”, O’Brien begins to warn readers of the lies and exaggerations that may occur when veterans tell war stories.
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...
Tim O’Brien is doing the best he can to stay true to the story for his fellow soldiers. Tim O’Brien believed that by writing the story of soldiers in war as he saw it brings some type of justice to soldiers in a war situation.
Many people say that the metal of a man is found in his ability to keep his ideals in spite of anything that life can through at you. If a man is found to have done these things he can be called a hero. Through a lifelong need to accept responsibility for all living things, Robert Ross defines his heroism by keeping faith with his ideals despite the betrayal, despair and tragedy he suffers throughout the course of The Wars by Timothy Findley.
...n amnesiac nation into “working through” its troubled past.” (Bly ,189) Story telling was the soldier’s salvation, their survival method. Being able to tell their stories let them express everything they were feeling and ultimately cope with the horrors of war and the guilt the carried.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried has readers and critics alike scratching their heads with wonder about the meaning of “story-truth” and “happening-truth.” Although, he served in the Vietnam War from 1968 until 1970, he fabricates the events of the war throughout The Things They Carried. At the same time, he insists that the truth lies at the heart of the emotion in the story, an idea that many readers question. Furthermore, it is pointless for the reader to attempt to sort through the stories and differentiate between the “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” because it is nearly impossible. This tactic is one of O’Brien’s more ingenious writing methods. He does not want the reader to know the difference between the two because in his opinion that fact is irrelevant. O’Brien obviously thinks outside the box and has everyone questioning reality. However, this fact is truly ironic, because the point is not to care what type of “truth” it is, but to instead feel the raw beauty of the emotion and to accept it as the truth. While trying to define “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” a couple chapters in particular focus on the idea of truth, “How to Tell a True War Story,” “The Man I Killed” and “Good Form.” O’Brien believes that the most important thing for a reader is to experience the emotion of the story, be it “story-truth” or “happening-truth,” as long as the real emotion is conveyed and understood by the reader, then it is as true as it could possibly be.
The Struggles in life is something everyone is faced with whether it is physical, emotional mental or personal struggles. These struggles are capable of shaping an individual’s personality and outlook on life. Timothy Findley’s novel The Wars, shows that struggles lead to the character’s ultimate inner struggles, outer struggles and self-discovery. War exists in a person’s physical and psychological aspects. In The Wars, Robert Ross goes to war and fights a personal and physical battle.
1. When O'Brien writes that "story-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth," he is claiming that the nature of truth is subjective. This applies to war stories, which he claims that if they have a moral, it is untrue. O'Brien states "It's a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn't, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness" (O'Brien 68), meaning even true stories will throw in lies to make it more believable. O'Brien encourages skepticism of war stories, saying at the end it comes down to gut instinct on whether believing a story is true or not. War stories with morals are the most likely to be untrue, because war is hell and should not encourage virtue or models of human behavior. O'Brien tells an example
War is a stage. Hamlet by William Shakespeare can be seen as the literary center of the universe because it draws upon themes of identity and morality, which are central themes in many succeeding works. War can have a metatheatrical power like Hamlet does because war can draw challenge the idea that war is simply realistic. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, O’Brien writes of the experience of several members of a platoon during the Vietnam War. Various characters and stories reappear throughout the novel. Some of his stories are intangible and are dramatizations of what a reader would deem as realistic. O’Brien uses these themes as a statement that there is not one single truth in war. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien uses paradox
Leo Tolstoy once said, “There is only one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth (Vethuizen 19). Although there is a great deal out of our control, understanding and speaking the truth is one that is entirely in control of each other. Expressing the truth is something that most humans feel the need to confess and express. Truth is the accurate depiction of events as they happened. In Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story,” the narrator throughout the story goes through the different steps on how to tell a “true” war story. Throughout the story, he continuously finds difficulty in how war stories are told and because of that
O’Brien’s definition of truth is that truth can change and isn’t always what exactly happened, but as long as the message of the story stays the same, then it’s true. When people tell stories they often embellish to make it sound interesting but when soldiers talk about war they often make up things that seem normal so that the story will seem believable. The things that seem like they are false or too outrageously unrealistic to be true, are often the only truth in the story. Because, things happen so quickly and often unexpected in a war “it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen”( O’brien 19). When stories about an occurrence are told, little details about certain things are more of a guess to what happened in
After reading this story you could easily draw parallels to famous poets such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sasson, Rupert Brooke and John Mccrae. All of these famous poets all wrote about the horrible brutal consequences of the war. Some of them even experienced the war. Some of them war scared because of the war. But they all wanted to show the genuine version of the war and not the glorified version that was used as propaganda.