The human capacity for imagination, not only shapes our minds, but also helps coping with reality. Imagination creates stories that help the mind try to understand events in life. It is at first an escape from life, but also a way to reconcile with reality. In the end, what is imagined becomes truer than the real truth. According to Patrick Smith in Tim O’Brien: A Critical Companion, “Imagination is the beginning of telling of stories, which also becomes a lifeline, a way of coping…” (101). In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the imagination contributes to the storytelling of the Vietnam War by the narrator. O’Brien deals with the concept of the imagination through stories that are surreal and ambiguous in communicating the truth of the Vietnam War. 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 …show more content…
The imagination leads to storytelling that portrays a certain truth in something that is unperceivable from the beginning. The theme of imagination used by Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried, allows an exploration on the uncertainties in war. The stories are told and retold to emphasize on the aftereffects veterans of the war went through and for the reader to understand experiences that will personally not happen to them. In an interview with Martin Naparsteck, O”Brien mentions that exercising the imagination is the main way of finding truth…” and “your imagination is going to do things with” an “experience to render it into something that you can deal with and that has meaning to it” (CLC 137). It requires a great imagination to create stories that land between fiction and the
Many times readers lose interest in stories that they feel are not authentic. In addition, readers feel that fictitious novels and stories are for children and lack depth. Tim O’ Brien maintains that keeping readers of fiction entertained is a most daunting task, “The problem with unsuccessful stories is usually simple: they are boring, a consequence of the failure of imagination- to vividly imagine and to vividly render extraordinary human events, or sequences of events, is the hard-lifting, heavy-duty, day-by-day, unending labor of a fiction writer” (Tim O’ Brien 623). Tim O’ Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” examines the correlation between the real experiences of war and the art of storytelling. In O’Brien’s attempt to bridge the gap between fiction and non-fiction the narrator of the story uses language and acts of violence that may be offensive to some. However some readers agree that Tim O" Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story" would lack authenticity and power without the use of crude language and violence.
In one of the most influential pieces of postmodern literature, Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried introduces us to a war fact/fiction writing where two of these themes intermingle into each other to such degree that nothing remains clear in the end but the emotional communication that attempts to convey the horrors of the Vietnam War. This writing style has distinguished Tim O’Brien from many other authors that wrote in the same genre and conveyed their respective style. In The Things They carried, the treatment of the Vietnam War is very precise, in the meaning of the nature of the war itself. It is a collection of short stories that contain near-fictional characters accounting their experiences in the Vietnam War. This near-fiction becomes troubling for the readers of Tim O’Brien. The readers listen to the author telling them stories about his experiences about the war differently, on many occasions through interviews, real life and then the narratives in The Things They Carried which also adds to the ambiguity of the prime narrative of the author that is near-fiction or near-fact. Tobey C. Herzog analyzes this prime narrative in his paper “Tim O’Brien “True Lies”” and presents us with eight hypothesis that may explain the behavior of the author and his prime narrative of story-truths. This paper will attempt to analyze one of the eight hypothesis and try to judge its worth for explaining the prime narrative of “True Lies” that are relevant in the life and works of Tim O’Brien.
In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien portrays a captivating message of responsibility to his readers. Its moral explains how we sometimes let ourselves “out” of our problems, because we would like to be somewhere pleasant. The excerpt retrospect’s the war in Vietnam and illustrates the mentality and life of the foot soldiers that fought and died there. By establishing what each character carried in a literal, spiritual, and mental form, the reader can understand what the men were about. By doing so, O’Brien creates a world where reality and imagination meet and are in competition with each other.
The truth behind stories is not always what happened, with each person 's perspective is where their truth lies. In the beginning of the novel, you start to think that it is going to be the same old war stories you read in the past, but it changes direction early. It is not about how the hero saves the day, but how each experience is different and how it stays with you. From his story about Martha, to how he killed a man, each one is so different, but has its own meaning that makes people who have not been in war, understand what it is like. Tim O’Brien can tell a fake story and make you believe it with no doubt in your mind. He does this throughout the novel. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien distinguishes truth from fantasy and the
A work's infallibility cannot be defined by imagination's input, facts become false when they are exaggerated. The Things They Carried, is a collection of short stories that revolve around The Vietnam War. Tim O'Brien takes the reader back in time to the late 1960s, and contemplates on experiences that emotionally scarred Vietnam soldiers. O'Brien shares multiple war stories that are claimed to be authentic during the war, and migrates to the 1980s in states like Iowa and MA to discuss how these stories have influenced his life. The Things They Carried, is a collection of false war stories, the stories' authenticity is altered in hopes of evoking strong emotions from readers.
Storytelling is one of the major themes in the book “The Things They Carried”, and is conveyed several times throughout most of the novel. The author, Tim O’Brien, uses the theme storytelling to convey his experience in VIetnam during the war. Another reason is to show what his soldiers had felt during the war, and what they experienced from their perspective. He uses many factors to convey this theme like how it has to be embarrassing and has no moral, story truth and happening truth, and he includes the stories of others. These really contribute to the theme of storytelling and why it is such a major theme for Tim O’Brien.
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.
In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, numerous themes are illustrated by the author. Through the portrayal of a number of characters, Tim O’Brien suggests that to adapt to Vietnam is not always more difficult than to revert back to the lives they once knew. Correspondingly the theme of change is omnipresent throughout the novel, specifically in the depiction of numerous characters.
How can one tell if something is true or not? How can one tell if what you hear or read is pure fiction or reality? These are questions I often asked myself when I read “The Things they Carried” by Tim O’Brien. You begin to ask these questions throughout the book, but begin to realize that these types of questions don't matter. What matters is the deeper meaning that the author is trying to convey. O’Brien often describes this as “accurate representation,” he does this throughout his book within his portrayals of each individual story or character. What I mean by this is that the author gives a truthful story of what happened, he may add a few extra details, but at the end it is the truth in the way he perceives it and the way he wants his
The novel, “The Things They Carried”, is about the experiences of Tim O’Brian and his fellow platoon members during their time fighting in the Vietnam War. They face much adversity that can only be encountered in the horrors of fighting a war. The men experience death of friends, civilians, enemies and at points loss of their rationale. In turn, the soldiers use a spectrum of methods to cope with the hardships of war, dark humor, daydreaming, and violent actions all allow an escape from the horrors of Vietnam that they experience most days.
In The Things They Carried, an engaging novel of war, author Tim O’Brien shares the unique warfare experience of the Alpha Company, an assembly of American military men that set off to fight for their country in the gruesome Vietnam War. Within the novel, the author O’Brien uses the character Tim O’Brien to narrate and remark on his own experience as well as the experiences of his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company. Throughout the story, O’Brien gives the reader a raw perspective of the Alpha Company’s military life in Vietnam. He sheds light on both the tangible and intangible things a soldier must bear as he trudges along the battlefield in hope for freedom from war and bloodshed. As the narrator, O’Brien displayed a broad imagination, retentive memory, and detailed descriptions of his past as well as present situations. 5. The author successfully uses rhetoric devices such as imagery, personification, and repetition of O’Brien to provoke deep thought and allow the reader to see and understand the burden of the war through the eyes of Tim O’Brien and his soldiers.
Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, expresses his journey throughout the Vietnam War via a series of short stories. The novel uses storytelling to express the emotional toll the men encountered, as well as elucidate their intense experiences faced during the war. The literary theory, postmodernism, looks at these war experiences and questions their subjectivity, objectivity, and truth in a literary setting. It allows the reader to look through a lens that deepens the meaning of a work by looking past what is written and discovering the various truths. O’Brien used the storytelling process to illustrate the bleeding frame of truth. Through his unique writing style, he articulates the central idea of postmodernism to demonstrate the
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.
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.
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