Amanda Korah P.1/Gwizdala February 26th, 2013 A Long Way Gone In Class Essay A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is a memoir of a young, emotionally distraught child soldier who takes his audience through his mental and physical journey to his eventual escape of the Civil War in Sierra Leone. For the past few days, our World Literature class have been trying to figure out/argue what category A Long Way Gone falls under. In Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried, he distinguishes between two types of stories: (1) stories that need to be real and (2) stories that rely on the emotional truth. To me, A Long Way Gone is a novel that relies on the emotional truth and should be read as such; it relies on the emotions of human beings for the story to be understood as it was written by a boy like one of us. Initially I was not sure what the emotional truth was, so I googled the definition and got that, “an emotional truth is writing in such a way that readers not only learn the facts of an event, but can feel the joy, sorrow, anger, envy, love, hate, poignancy that the participant feels.” And I believe that a story that relies on the emotional truth is not any less significant than stories that strictly state the truth. A story told using emotional truth/validity is a story that, in my opinion, offers more of the real picture than that of a story that doesn’t tug on the emotions of a reader and just blatantly state the true happenings of an event. I’ve come to terms that there is a possibility of a stretch in truth in A Long Way Gone. Listening to the arguments made throughout the discussion, there is evidence out there to counter some of the statements made by Ishmael Beah in his memoir (i.e. Being a child soldier in 1995 ... ... middle of paper ... ...ay because we are emotionally vulnerable beings who respond more to emotions rather than the real situation. We believe everything is ok when someone expresses happiness, and we think things are going bad if someone expresses sorrow. We acknowledge situations, and we react to the emotions felt about a particular situations, which is why Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone is categorized as a story of emotional truth, it relies on our emotions to bring awareness to not only his life experiences but problems that went on in the world, and problems that still may be going on in the world. We must view this emotional truth story as valid as one that tells us a straight up truth, the reason why this book was made an emotional truth is so that we have a better understanding (and we understand better) about our surroundings, in a way that we would understand to the fullest.
In his personal memoir titled “A long way Gone” Ishmael Beah incorporated the concept of family into his personal story. Traveling in a world of his own Beah encountered different events where his approach to family evolved. From losing his important primary family, and establishing close relationships with individuals he met along his journey. Hope, revenge, trust & love were three important key stages discovered as his definition and approach to family changed.
“This is true.” (O’Brien, 420) – with this simple statement which also represents a first, three-word introductory paragraph to Tim O’Brien’s short story, “How to Tell a True War Story”, the author reveals the main problem of what will follow. “Truth” – when looked up in a dictionary, we would probably find definitions similar to sincerity and honesty on the one hand, and correctness, accuracy or reality on the other hand. When looking at these definitions, one can make out two groups of meaning: While sincerity and honesty are very subjective, correctness or accuracy are supposed to be objective by nature. One can be sincere and still not report the truth, due to the simple fact that one does not know any better. Accuracy, however, is supposed to represent facts, bits and pieces of information that paint a picture of an event, untouched by opinion or attitude.
Life is made up of decisions and choices. Every single day, people make numerous decisions, some big and some small. Many choices can impact your entire life while others, like what you eat for breakfast, aren’t as important. However, all of your choices build the track for your life and make you who you are. The choices you make can be greatly impacted by your surroundings and environment. They are also made based on your values and beliefs. In the memoir A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, Ishmael is a young fourteen year old boy thrown in the middle of Sierra Leone's civil war. During the war, Ishmael is given a series of obstacles where he is required to make important life choices that would impact his life greatly. At one part of Ishmael's
An article called, “The Real War,” written by Roger J. Spiller, begins with a quote by Walt Whitman, “The real war will never get in the books.” The author writes about an interview with Paul Fussell, who was a soldier in World War Two and has written many books about World War One and World War Two. Fussell is very opinionated and critical about other books written about these wars, asserting they are not realistic or portray the true essence of what really occurred by soldiers and other people participating in the wars. I claim that it is impossible to convey the actual personal feelings and emotions of those involved in a war in books or any other forms of media.
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...
The war in Sierra Leone lasted eleven years and resulted in mass murder, destruction, and mainly, loss of innocence. This war impacted nearly everyone in the country, however its specific damage on the children of Sierra Leone is a tragedy that haunts the victims to this day. The Rebels killed and tortured thousands of innocent people and destroyed villages throughout the country. Boys as young as twelve were forced to form an army and fight against the rebels. Ishmael Beah, a young boy living amongst this war, tells his story in the book A Long Way Gone. He explains the gory and disturbing details of his life as a boy soldier. As the young boys were brainwashed into killing, the women and young girls of the country were being raped,
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
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.
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward is a memoir that describes her life through her childhood to adulthood. Through pages 1 to 163, the audience is exposed to 8 divisions of the book so far which reiterate Jesmyn's life’s story and three specific deaths. The 8 major divisions are; Prologue, We are in Wolf Town Distant Past - 1977, Roger Eric Daniels III, We Are Born, Demond Cook, We are Wounded, Charles Joseph Martin, and We are Watching. So far in Men We Reaped, I believe Jesmyn Wards main point of writing this story is to show the audience the hardships of being Black and the racism that haunts her family which ultimately leads to countless deaths from many outside resources like drugs and economic inequality.
3. What does O’Brien mean when he writes, “Thas is a true war story that never happened.”
It has been such a joy reading “The Norton Introduction to Literature” by Kelly J. Mays. Of all the stories that I was assigned to read, one story in particular stood out to me because of how the author used words to create a vivid image in my mind. The story I’m talking about is “Araby” by James Joyce. James Joyce does a great job creating vivid images in the readers mind and creates a theme that most of us can relate. In this paper I will be discussing five scholarly peer reviewed journals that also discusses the use of image and theme that James Joyce created in his short story “Araby”. Before I start diving into discussing these five scholarly peer review journals, I would like to just write a little bit about “Araby” by James Joyce. James Joyce is an Irish writer, mostly known for modernist writing and his short story “Araby” is one of fifteen short stories from his first book that was published called “Dubliners”. Lastly, “Araby” is the third story in Dubliners. Now I will be transitioning to discussing the scholarly peer review journals.
Everyone has different points of views, feelings, reactions, and etcetera. People handle things in different ways. I read the story “Field Trip” by Tim O’brien. The story has emotions, but yet it’s still very settle.
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 Sweet Hereafter” portrays the grief stricken citizens of a remote Canadian town traumatized by a terrible accident, and the impact of an ambulance-chasing lawyer who is attempting to deal with the grief in his own life. The film also depicts the grieving subjects susceptibility to convert grief and guilt into both blame and monetary gain and the transformation this small community faces after such a devastating event.
In “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien, Orwell’s ideas are questioned and the competition between the truth and the underlying meaning of a story is discussed. O’Brien’s story depicts that the truth isn’t always a simple concept; and that not every piece of literature or story told can follow Orwell’s list of rules (Orwell 285). The story is told through an unnamed narrator as he re-encounters memories from his past as a soldier in the Vietnam War. With his recollection of past encounters, the narrator also offers us segments of didactic explanation about what a “true war story” is and the power it has on the human body (O’Brien 65). O’Brien uses fictional literature and the narration of past experiences to raise a question; to what extent should the lack of precision, under all circumstances, be allowed? In reality, no story is ever really truthful, and even if it is, we have no proof of it. The reader never feels secure in what they are being told. The reliability of the source, the author, and the narrator are always being questioned, but the importance of a story isn’t about the truth or the accuracy in which it is told, but about the “sunlight” it carries (O’Brien 81).