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Literary devices used in tim obriens the things they carried
Literary devices used in tim obriens the things they carried
What kind of literary device is used in the things they carry
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Vincent Salgado
Ms.Ashby
5/14/18
The Things They Carry Final Essay
Stories are a tale of someone’s memories from the past. In addition, they are an account of imaginary characters or events to make the story come alive. In Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carry, O’Brien philosophizes about what stories really are. He obtains the true definition of stories, establishing his own definition on what it is. To O’Brien, a story is a made up of two things, a ‘Story-Truth’ and a ‘Happening-Truth.’ Tim O’Brien says about a ‘Story-Truth’ that someone can lie about parts of the story to make it more believable and enjoyable in the end. A ‘Happening-Truth’ is an actual account of a person’s past events that is true but may be more boring. The stories
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They unveil pictures, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and more. Later on, Jimmy Cross then talks about his love for Martha to O’Brien. He recounts when Ted Lavender died and burned the picture of Martha as he thought it was his fault for being so encompassed by her love. During this dialogue between the two characters, Cross says “Well, I did- I burned it. After Lavender died, I couldn’t...This is a new one. Martha gave it to me herself (O’Brien 27).” This means that since Cross is recounting a particular story to Tim O’Brien that this is a ‘Happening-Truth.’ The reader can believe this is a ‘Happening-Truth’ because it only would have been Tim O’Brien who would gather this information on Jimmy Cross’s love for Martha and write it in his book. He is also in the actual written book relaying all his experiences in the Vietnam war. This is evident that what he is telling is an actual truth. However, the part that could be a story truth is the hidden quote on page 28 and …show more content…
I want you to know why story-truth is truer than happening-truth. Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look...Here is the story-truth. He was slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about 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 and 172)
O’Brien is reiterating the point that he is trying to make in the novel. In order to feel what he feels he needs to lie in a ‘Story-Truth’ to the reader to bring it all alive. What can be taken away is that in order to get a legitimate war story, there needs to be some sort of ‘Story-Truth’. The ‘Happening-Truth’ is usually saved for the end.
Subsequently, O’Brien has portrayed that in order for readers to truly listen, there needs to be ‘Story-Truth’ to aid ‘Happening-Truth’. Without ‘Story-Truth’, no one would actually listen and in addition there would be gaps in the story if something wasn't reasonably fabricated. Tim O'Brien's meeting with Jimmy Cross post-war, the story of Rat Kiley writing to Curt Lemon's sister on his death, and the complete lie about Tim killing a Vietnamese soldier is the gateway to the foundation that O’Brien lays out for the reader: to be cautious about what parts of a story are inauthentic or
Tim O'Briens' Perspective and Statements in Regard to Storytelling and Relationship to the Truth in The Things They Carried
...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.”
O'Brien explains how the stories told about those who have passed are meant to keep the deceased's life alive. The "weight of memory" was one thing all the solders carried (14). When added to the physical weight of their gear and the emotional burdens of war, it was all too much. In response, the men altered their perceptions of the truth in order to lighten the haunting weight of memory. O'Brien suggests "in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true," memory is altered to compensate for its weight (82). In this way, O'Brien, and the rest of the men, were able to utilize "story-truth (179)." Stories alter truth, therefore, a well-told story can actually allow the dead to continue to live on. "In a story, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world (225)." In this way you could "keep the dead alive" with "blatant lies, bringing the body and soul back together (239)." O'Brien remembers listening to a story about Curt Lemon. He recalls how "you'd never know that Curt Lemon was dead (240)." It seemed like "he was still out there in the dark" yet, "he was dead (240)." Similarly O'Brien uses story to save his childhood friend's life, "not her body - her life (236)." In his stories Linda "can smile and sit up. She can reach out (236)." He allows her to come to life and "touch [h...
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.
Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried challenges the reader to question what they are reading. In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story”, O’Brien claims that the story is true, and then continues to tell the story of Curt’s death and Rat Kiley’s struggle to cope with the loss of his best friend. As O’Brien is telling the story, he breaks up the story and adds in fragments about how the reader should challenge the validity of every war story. For example, O’Brien writes “you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (69), “in many cases a true war story cannot be believed” (71), “almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true” (81), and “a thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth (83). All of those examples are ways in which O’Brien hinted that his novel is a work of fiction, and even though the events never actually happened – their effects are much more meaningful. When O’Brien says that true war stories are never about war, he means that true war stories are about all the factors that contribute to the life of the soldiers like “love and memory” (85) rather than the actual war. Happening truth is the current time in which the story was being told, when O’Brien’s daughter asked him if he ever killed anyone, he answered no in happening truth because it has been 22 years since he was in war and he is a different person when his daughter asked him. Story truth
A true war story is not always true. Some would say a true war story is an experience from war. Others, who came from war, would say they make up stories to make war seem crazier than it really is. Tim O’Brian states that the story is fiction, but the moral is true. Tracy Kidder had written war stories based on his time in Vietnam, and his book is rated as nonfiction, even though he admits that some war stories are made up.
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
During the Vietnam war, soldiers were not exposed to the traditional coping mechanisms of our American society, as illustrated in Tim Obrien's The Things They Carried. These men were forced to discover and invent new ways to deal with the pressures of war, using only their resources while in the Vietnamese jungle. It was not possible for any soldier to carry many items or burdens with them, but if something was a necessity, a way was found to carry it, and coping mechanisms were a necessity to survive the war.
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,
The word "hero" is so often used to describe people who overcome great difficulties and rise to the challenge that is set before them without even considering the overwhelming odds they are up against. In our culture, heroes are glorified in literature and in the media in various shapes and forms. However, I believe that many of the greatest heroes in our society never receive the credit that they deserve, much less fame or publicity. I believe that a hero is simply someone who stands up for what he/she believes in. A person does not have to rush into a burning building and save someone's life to be a hero. Someone who is a true friend can be a hero. A hero is someone who makes a difference in the lives of others simply by his/her presence. In Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, the true heroes stand out in my mind as those who were true friends and fought for what they believed in. These men and women faced the atrocities of war on a daily basis, as explained by critic David R. Jarraway's essay, "'Excremental Assault' in Tim O'Brien: Trauma and Recovery in Vietnam War Literature" and by Vietnam Veteran Jim Carter. Yet these characters became heroes not by going to drastic measures to do something that would draw attention to themselves, but by being true to their own beliefs and by making a difference to the people around them.
There is uncertainty on every story that is told in the book. In every story there is a retelling of an event. It is as if by retelling, the full truth can be found. Although O’Brien mentions that the stories are real, he also reminds the reader that they are all made up. For example in “How to Write a True War story”, before telling
Stories are important for many reasons. Not only do we as human beings rely on telling each other stories to pass time, get our points across, or share memories we have but also to teach lessons. Many stories that are told are about something that has happened to someone personally, or a story that was passed on to them by another person. Regardless, stories have been used to help us as humans communicate since the beginning of time. Story telling has been an extreme aid to our history as we pass tales on from one generation to the next. Stories have impacted me ever since I was a little girl. I was told stories not only to get me to fall asleep every night but also as lessons for me when I did something wrong. Stories with morals were also told to me so I could learn from them. Many stories told to me even to this day help me learn and grow as a person. I myself even tell stories of my own in my writing along with stories I have learned from other...
O’Brien subjectifies truth by obscuring both fact and fiction within his storytelling. In each story he tells there is some fuzziness in what actually happened. There are two types of truths in this novel, “story-truth” and “happening-truth” (173). “Happening-truth” is what happened in the moment and “story-truth” is the way the storyteller reflects and interprets a situation. O’Brien uses these two types of truths to blur out the difference between fact and fiction. For example, when Rat Kiley tells a story he always overexaggerates. He does this because “he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt,” (85). This is the same for most storytellers, even O’Brien. When he tells the story of Norman Bowker he makes his own truth stating, “He did not freeze up or lose the Silver Star for valor. That part of the story is my own” (154). Not everything that O’Brien said was fact, however, it made the the meaning of the story effective and significant. O’Brien reveals that he never killed a man after devoting a whole short story to “The Man I Killed.” When his daughter asks “Daddy, tell the truth, did you ever kill anybody?” he can honestly say “Of course not,” or “Yes,” (172). This illustrates the subjectivity of truth, how both truths can in fact be true. This goes for all the stories told in this novel, the truth is held in the storyteller 's
Stories are our essence of life. They grow and change with us. They allow us to reconstruct the pas, and put our slant on things. They don’t’ have make sense, and they don’t all have to be fact. That’s what kind of story this is.