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).
A story or experience can be told in many different versions, truthfully or not and they’re all equally valid, each carrying its own equal resonating affect. This occurs in the four versions of Curt Lemon’s death; the narrator makes the puzzling statement, “this is true” but continues to provide us with four different occurrences of what “really” happened (O’Brien 65). One of them describes his death as “almost beautiful”, another as “horrible” and we’re never given the actual truth, in fact, the reader questions if there even is one truthful story ...
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...The precision or real truthfulness of a story is irrelevant, “a thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer then the truth” (O’Brien 80). In reality, truth isn’t about occurrence, but about imagination and perception, a story can be factual or fictional but its meaning will be the same. Therefore, the lack of precision is what actually provides us with the truth, nothing is accurate and this will always be the case, at times, the truth is so powerful that it cannot simply be put into words as Orwell would like, it can only exist in the intricacy of the human mind.
Works Cited
O’Brien, Tim. “How to Tell a True War Story.” The Things They Carried. Boston and New York: Mariner Books, 2009. 64-81. Print.
Orwell, George. “Politics and the English Language.” George Orwell: Critical Essays. London: Harvill Secker: 2009. 270-286. Print.
To write a true war story that causes the readers to feel the way the author felt during the war, one must utilize happening-truth as well as story-truth. The chapter “Good Form” begins with Tim O’Brien telling the audience that he’s forty-three years old, and he was once a soldier in the Vietnam War. He continues by informing the readers that everything else within The Things They Carried is made up, but immediately after this declaration he tells the readers that even that statement is false. As the chapter continues O’Brien further describes the difference between happening-truth and story-truth and why he chooses to utilize story-truth throughout the novel. He utilizes logical, ethical, and emotional appeals throughout the novel to demonstrate the importance of each type of truth. By focusing on the use of emotional appeals, O’Brien highlights the differences between story-truth and happening-truth and how story-truth can be more important and truer than the happening-truth.
O’Brien, Tim. “How To Tell a True War Story.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2003. p. 420-429.
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’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 narrative, How to Tell a War Story depicts the livelihood and experience of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. More so evaluating the life Tim O’ Brien and several other characters in his platoon. The sequences of stories reveals the thoughts and behavior of many post-Vietnam veterans and also can be related to the behavior of many veterans today. Throughout the segments of stories, “How to tell a War Story”, “Speaking of Courage and Notes”, and “The Things They Carried”, O’ Brien illustrates a common theme of guilt and sacrifice among the key characters Lieutenant Cross, Rat, and O’ Brien himself. Each character are presented with an unexpected responsibility and are forced to serve their state. A sense of discomfort
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.
O’Brien, Tim. “How to Tell a True War Story.” The Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.
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
Many times in order to make the story seem right there has to be something filled in with a little lie or two. For example in O’Brien’s story rat is the one who writes to the friends’ sister but there was also some other guys who say what happened. One of the other guys tells his version of how the guy died, but he explained more what happened before the death and after. He explains how Rat and his buddy named Curt Lemon where enjoying time together playing with some smoke grenades and how one of them loses their life was pretty descriptive to us. Just that when he describes how Curt’s’ death occurs is a little hard to believe. The reason why I say that is because he describes the guy’s death in a more like romanticized moment for him. He be describes how it was a terrible moment but seamed very different in his words “when he died it was almost beautiful” He was saying how they were in the darkness and Curt stepping on a mine which made him lifted in the air seamed beautiful when the sunlight hit him at the moment of his death. At that moment he basically glorified the way Lemon died. Since he claims he saw the whole thing the part where he describes Lemons death is very skeptical. For me I think he made it up because it’s hard to believe you would see a death in that
Some authors choose to write stories and novels specifically to evoke certain emotions from their readers as opposed to writing it for just a visual presentation. In order to do this, they occasionally stretch the truth and “distort” the event that actually occurred. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is a compilation of short stories about the Vietnam War with distortion being a key element in each of them.
Throughout Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, a plethora of stories are told concerning the lives of a select number of soldiers in and out of the Vietnam War. In his writing, O’Brien also conveys his own thoughts on the art of storytelling and the nature of stories themselves. In these passages, O’Brien provides a detailed analysis of the challenges of storytelling, the effects of time on memory, the role of imagination in storytelling, the reason for retelling a story, and a story’s purpose and process for the reader.
Works Cited for: Orwell, George. 1984. The 'Standard' of the ' London: Penguin Books, 2008. Print. The.
War veterans wrote Slaughterhouse-Five and The Things They Carried. Some parts of the book are made for readers to believe and the other parts give realistic examples of war. The authors introduce their plots as truth-based on purpose. In the chapter “Notes”, O’Brien admits: “that part of the story is my own.” (O’Brien 151). In the first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut begins with: “All this happened, more or less.” (Vonnegut 1). The authors create a picture for the reader on their past experiences to make their stories real. Even the parts that are fiction are not lies, because the writers have the knowledge to be able to generalize, shorten, and produce events in the book. O’Brien writes: “story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” (O’Brien 172). It seemed as if Vonnegut and O’Brien used fiction to make the story more exciting. They write abo...
Telling a “true” war story is simple. Make it sound exciting, tell it with a straight face, and create an underlying narrative that cannot be called into question. Tim O’Brien in, “How to Tell a True War Story”, views one’s perception of reality and one’s truth as both objective and subjective. Much like Jayanthi and Alicia in Leslie Bell’s article, “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and The Paradox of Sexual Freedom,” they also tell “ true war stories” of the times when they were raped. However, these girls cope with their traumatic experiences by disassociation and recreating their own perception of reality. And likewise in Azar Nafisi, “Selections From: Reading Lolita in Tehran,” the women in Nafisi’s reading group disassociate from their
For much time the gruesome, jaw-dropping nature of war stories has lead readers to question their truth. This is particularly true in the emotional anecdotes told about the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, is one of the first to address the idea of truth in his novel itself. Since O’Brien never confirms whether the factuality of his tales, many readers question whether the stories he weaves are actually true. O’Brien does not want for his audience to read so deeply into the facts and figures. To him it should not matter whether his tales truly happened. O’Brien’s greater purpose in writing of Vietnam is to share the stories he physically could not tell in a way that saves himself and society. He aims to use writing as self-release while also warning his audience of the horrors of war.