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.
One factor is the story truth and the happening truth, what had occurred versus what was thought to have occurred. O’Brien quotes that, “Story truth is truer sometimes than happening truth”. Story truth is what had seemed to had happened, but in the perspective of the others and not O’Brien’s perspective. Happening truth is what O’Brien remembers from his own perspective, what he saw while he was there. These are contributing factors to the theme because they are important for the audience to
For example he quotes this in the chapter “Notes”, “Norman is back in the story, where he belongs, and I don’t think he would mind that his real name appears”. O’Brien wasn’t originally going to include this segment, but he still did anyway because he felt it was important to the story. Even though in the chapter “Speaking of Courage” was not about the war, O’Brien still wanted to include it, because it was all that he had gotten from Norman. He wanted to include everyone that was a part of the group in the story, because he wanted them to make the story, he wanted their stories to contribute to his own. That’s why to O’Brien includes these stories in this novel, they help contribute to the main theme and pay his respect towards his fellow
There are over thirty genres of books in the world. All of stories are told and written in many different forms from written to spoken, action to romance, or fiction to non-fiction. But, all stories have something in common--a theme that is intended to make a difference to the reader. No matter what the story is about, it is centered around a strong theme. The author of The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien., uses a separate theme in each of his vignettes. But, these themes aren't always depicted through truth. "I'm forty-three years old, true, and I'm a writer now , and a long time ago I walked through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier. Almost everything else is invented"(171). O'Brien uses story-truth and happening-truth in The Things They Carried to show a great theme. In certain cases in the book, story-truth shows theme better and happening-truth isn't used and vice versa. In the vignette "The
When the quote says “that part of the story is my own” it must mean O’Brien had taken some true details from personal stories. Could O’Brien taken true information but tried to throw the readers off to keep some privacy for the men the stories were based off? Some of the stories present within the book are completely out of the water. How could O’Brien imagine those ideas up without a base of what actually happened? I believe O’Brien switched the names of the soldiers but kept the stories. If he did the name switching it could emphasize on how the reader could focus on the ideas and situations, not the people. O’Brien would showcase how these situations can affect everyone. Another challenging aspect for me is if the stories are partly true why not honor those written about. Do the soldiers feel shame reading about their failures? O’Brien wrote his novel upon the hopes of helping his PTSD and it could have helped the veterans read and receive help. Along with help the vets it could supply the vets with the honor they
O Brien 's point of view is an accurate one as he himself because he is a Vietnam veteran. The title of the short story is meaningful because it describes each soldier’s personality and how he handles conflict within the mind and outside of the body during times of strife. The title fits the life as a soldier perfectly because it shows the reality that war is more than just strategy and attacking of forces. O’Brien narrates the story from two points of view: as the author and the view of the characters. His style keeps the reader informed on both the background of things and the story itself at the same
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.
Written by author Tim O’Brien after his own experience in Vietnam, “The Things They Carried” is a short story that introduces the reader to the experiences of soldiers away at war. O’Brien uses potent metaphors with a third person narrator to shape each character. In doing so, the reader is able to sympathize with the internal and external struggles the men endure. These symbolic comparisons often give even the smallest details great literary weight, due to their dual meanings. The symbolism in “The Things They Carried” guides the reader through the complex development of characters by establishing their humanity during the inhumane circumstance of war, articulating what the men need for emotional and spiritual survival, and by revealing the character’s psychological burdens.
...ien writes this story in a completely non traditional way and manages to create a whole new experience for the reader. He takes the reader out of the common true, false diameters and forces the reader to simply experience the ultimate truth of the story by reliving the emotional truth that the war caused him. Although this may be a bit challenging for the reader, it becomes much easier once the reader understands the purpose for the constant contradictions made by O’Brien. The difference between “story-truth” and “happening-truth” is that “story-truth” is fictional, and “happening-truth” is the actual factual truth of what happened. The “story-truth” is the most important when it comes to O’Brien, and understanding his work. It is meant to capture the heart and mind of the readers and take them on a journey through war with the O’Brien, as he experienced and felt it.
The book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is fiction and truth wound together to create a frustrating and addicting novel of fiction about the Vietnam war. O’Brien created stories by using his experiences during the Vietnam whether they are true stories or not is an unattainable knowledge for the reader, the only person of that knowledge is only O 'Brien himself. Through his writing he emphasized the the fact that you cannot perfectly recall the experiences of your past when your telling a story but the way it is told is “true sometime than the happening-truth(O’Brien 171) which helps give The Things They Carried depth beyond that of a “true”, true story.
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.
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.
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.
The Things They Carried represents a compound documentary novel written by a Vietnam veteran, Tim O'Brien, in whose accounts on the Vietnam war one encounters graphical depictions of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Thus, the stories "Speaking of Courage," "The Man I Killed," "How to Tell a True War Story," "Enemies" and "Friends," "Stockings," and "The Sweetheart of The Song Tra Bong "all encompass various examples of PTSD.
One of the later entries in the book called “Good form”, helps alleviate the suspicion of dishonesty in the stories by bluntly telling the reader that all the other entries are a mix of both fact and fiction. O’Brien feels the need to make up parts of his stories due to the fact that he wants the reader to experience emotions as opposed to mental visuals. He describes these emotion-laden scenes as “story-truth” due to the fact that they are part story and part truth. The parts that are only for emotio...
The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War that the author, Tim O’Brien, uses to convey his experiences and feelings about the war. The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O’Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. To O’Brien the novel is not only a compilation of stories, but also a release of the fears, sadness, and anger that he has felt because of the Vietnam War.
He wants the readers to be able to feel how he felt and understand how everything happened as he tells the story. He wants to provoke the emotional truth. O’Brien tries to prove that imagination is not completely a bad thing and that it is also a good thing. O’Brien starts to create stories about what could have happened and what he could not do at the war, in addition to the original war story. With the power of imagination, O’Brien is able to talk about something that he could have done but did not do in his past.
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