Storytelling is an art of expression that has been existent for the at least the last two millenniums. Nobody knows when this art form had originated but people have assumed that storytelling history dates back as early as the BCE era. Storytelling was popular among earlier human life that inhabited the world. The earlier generations of Native Americans would use storytelling as part of their culture whether it was an activity to pass time or to bond with the family and their tribes. In Azar Nafisi’s “Selections of Reading Lolita in Tehran”, she uses various literary works to share different experiences with her students. Different books were discussed by Nafisi to give the students insight on the world outside of their own. Whereas Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” defines the purpose of a war story while telling his own about his experience in Vietnam with his battle buddies. In addition to telling his story, he also throws in some tips on how to tell an effective war story. Stories do not just contain characters and a plot line; it also contains life lessons and morals that could be applied to almost anyone. These stories are often passed onto the next person through the art of storytelling. The purpose of storytelling is to share personal experiences and lessons with people in hopes to teach or inspire them when creating their own experience. People tell stories to share the unforgettable moments that gave them a range of emotions and in return, people read these stories to learn about those moments and relate to them with moments of their own.
Storytelling provides a way to share unforgettable experiences and valuable information with other people and teach life lessons that could be useful to those who receive t...
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... and will continue to be around in the future. Storytelling will never die out because word of mouth is one of the easiest methods to educate information and spread experiences that can influence others. Often times they are just used as a form of pastime that many individuals just enjoy being able to listen to.
Works Cited
Nafisi, Azar. “Selections from Reading Lolita in Tehran.” Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random House, 2003. Print. Excerpt from The New Humanities Reader. Ed. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. 4th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 247-67. Print.
O’Brien, Tim. “How to Tell a True War Story.” The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1998. Print. Excerpt from The New Humanities Reader. Ed. Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer. 4th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 268-80. Print.
O'Brien, Tim. "How to Tell a True War Story." Writing as Re-Vision. Eds. Beth Alvarado and Barbara Cully. Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster Custom Publishing, 1996. 550-8.
‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’Brien provides a insider’s view of war and its distractions, both externally in dealing with combat and internally dealing with the reality of war and its effect on each solder. The story, while set in Vietnam, is as relevant today with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as it was in the 1960’s and 1970’s in Southeast Asia. With over one million soldiers having completed anywhere from one to three tours in combat in the last 10 years, the real conflict might just be inside the soldier. O’Brien reflects this in his writing technique, using a blend of fiction and autobiographical facts to present a series of short narratives about a small unit of soldiers. While a war story, it is also an unrequited love story too, opening with Jimmy Cross holding letters from a girl he hoped would fall in love with him. (O’Brien 1990).
In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses this story as a coping mechanism; to tell part of his stories and others that are fiction from the Vietnamese War. This is shown by using a fictions character’s voice, deeper meaning in what soldier’s carried, motivation in decision making, telling a war story, becoming a new person and the outcome of a war in one person. Tim O’ Brien uses a psychological approach to tell his sorrows, and some happiness from his stories from the war. Each part, each story is supposed to represent a deeper meaning on how O’Brien dealt, and will deal with his past. In war, a way to discover and to invent new ways to release oneself from the pressure of it, O’ Brien’s writing is all about it; this stories will makes the reader understand his burden.
Stories are a means of passing on information, acting as a medium to transport cultural heritage and customs forward into the future. In his essay titled "You'll Never Believe What Happened," King says that, "The truth about stories is that that's all we are” (King Essay 2). Contained within this statement is a powerful truth: without stories, a society transcending the limitations of time could not exist. Cultures might appear, but they would inevitably die away without a means of preservation. Subsequent generations would be tasked with creating language, customs, and moral laws, all from scratch. In a way, stories form the core of society's existence.
“It’s time to be blunt… I want you to feel what I felt” (O’Brien 171). There are two sides to every war and throughout the novel The Things They Carried, the author Tim O’Brien creates a war in the reader’s mind centered on trust. O’Brien forces the reader to realize the impact of a true war story where, instead of giving an accurate account, he blurs the lines about the importance of trust and gives an emotionally driven anecdote. The author establishes ethos in a unique way by impacting the credibility of a story rarely with facts and forcing the reader to focus on what is more important to him: evoking emotion. These emotions envelop the entirety of Tim O 'Brien 's short stories, showing his clear intentions to make the reader feel what
O'Brien, Tim. "How to Tell a True War Story," Writing As Re-Vision: A Studenl's Anthology Ed. Beth Alvarado and Barbara Cully. Needham Heights, MA: Simon and Schuster Custom Publishing, 1996. 550-558.
O’Brien, Tim. How to Tell a True War Story. Literature and Ourselves. Sixth Edition. Eds.
King, Rosemary. "O'Brien's 'How to Tell a True War Story.'" The Explicator. 57.3 (1999): 182. Expanded Academic ASAP.
The ancient ritual of storytelling is a form of communication that dates back as far as civilization and human language can go. Timeless works of literature such as Beowulf and The Iliad were originally told orally and passed down for generations. Storytelling has played an important role in the development of society due to the emphasis on language, the preservation of history, and the acknowledgment of morals.
The novel The Thing They Carried is a compilation of short stories that share underlying themes and characters. One of the stories is called “How to tell a True War Story”. In this story the narrator expands on a central theme of the distinction between truth and fiction when writing a war story. The story, like most of the other stories in the novel jumps erratically between events, which oftentimes creates confusion and a sense of the surreal in the story. Throughout the story the narrator repeatedly shows that when writing a war story the “story truth is truer sometimes than happening truth.”(O’Brien pg. 171) This quotation encompasses the theme and supports it. The narrator’s use of stylistic devices coupled with stories such as “How to Tell a True War Story” and “Good Form” exemplifies how fiction can fully represent the truth whilst the facts fall miserably short.
Through The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien moves beyond the horror of fighting in the Vietnam War to examine with sensitivity and insight the nature of courage and fear. Included, is a collection of interrelated stories. A few of the stories are brutal, while others are flawed, blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. All the stories, however, deal with one platoon. Some are about the wartime experiences of soldiers, and others are about a 43-year-old writer reminiscing about his platoon’s experiences. In the beginning chapter, O’Brien rambles about the items the soldiers carry into battle, ranging from can openers, pocketknives, and mosquito repellent o Kool-Aid, sewing kits, and M-16 assault rifles. Yet, the story is truly about the intangible things the soldiers “carry”: “grief, terror, love, longing… shameful memories (and) the common secret of cowardice” (Harris & O’Brien 21).
Storytelling’s impact on people who use it has been life saving in certain cases. By asserting the existence of different perspectives, writers get to suppress their own opinions in order to sympathize with others. (insert thing about meta-fiction) With this idea in mind, author Kate Taylor wrote the novel Serial Monogamy, a meta-fiction of a writer recalling the story of her husband’s affair and her deal with terminal breast cancer, all through her telling of Dickens’ secret life and tales of the Arabian Nights. In Serial Monogamy, storytelling makes people more understanding as they explore new perspectives.
King, Rosemary. "O'Brien's 'How to Tell a True War Story.'" The Explicator. 57.3 (1999): 182. Expanded Academic ASAP.
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.
Mueller expresses how stories allow children to achieve the impossible, such as flying when they are incapable and discovering the unknown. Stories give a life to the people who are unable to live, and that is one of the reasons why imagination is so essential to our world. The sharing of tales bring genuine joy to people without the need of materialistic items; it gives people the chance to relate to the author on a common ground. The sense of shared joy and mutual connection brings people closer together and expands on relationships. People begin to feel as if they are apart of an imagined community, which is a community in which people perceive themselves to be apart of, through common interests or relations from media or works of literature. Communities such as these allow people to connect with each other, despite never crossing paths. It allows the birth and the strengthening of relationships, for when people begin to converse with others, the first thing they do is find common experiences or interests that they share. In addition, a quote from Mueller, herself, adds to why we tell stories: “Because the story of our life becomes our life. Because each of us tell the same story but tell it differently, and none of us tells it the same way twice.” Tales are devised with the incorporation of the narrator’s imagination; it is a way to