The Writer's Duty Essay

963 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Literature as a mirror of life is what

Subjective Reality: The Writer’s Duty Essay William Faulkner described in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize that writing is a form of creation using the human spirit that allows mankind to endure and prevail (Faulkner 872). It is possible that a life can be saved, and even more so extended, by keeping the spirit alive and writing a life for the person (O’Brien 233). In order to do this, a writer must not only use abstractions, but make them objective through the purpose that he or she gives them, whether or not the actual story is true. Creating these solidified truths is done partly through the writer, but the reader must breathe the vital breath of life into the story, and that way can make it last forever (Nabokov 974). It is …show more content…

Compassion, sacrifice, endurance, courage, honor, hope, and pride are all concepts that are believed to be the old verities that are essential to each piece of writing in order to produce work that is worth the effort and significant to the reader, who must reciprocate and understand the meaning (Faulkner 872). To make these truths apparent, it may be necessary to exaggerate what really happened for what was actually felt, and using schemes like imagery, can make the reader fully grasp the meaning behind the shallow sentences on the page. As Tim O’Brien explains while exploring the significance and content involved with telling a true war story, “Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (O’Brien 80). The truth behind a story relies solely on the reason the story is being told, and the answer to that oftentimes lies in what feelings the story brings about. The emotions give the reader insight into the conflicts of the human condition, which is all the writer can hope to

Show More
Related

  • Story-Truth And Truth In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    903 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Tim O’ Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story

    602 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Exposing the Truth in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

    2203 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Irony in Tim O’Brien’s How to Tell a True War Story

    2118 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...r because it seems impossible to reconstruct an event from this objective point of view. Maybe the point of telling stories is not trying to recreate the reality of a past event, but it is the message that matters because that might be in the end the only thing that does not necessarily depend on single details of the story, but on the overall picture of an event. That is why to O’Brien another important component of a war story is the fact that a war story will never pin down the definite truth and that is why a true war story “never seems to end” (O’Brien, 425). O’Brien moves the reader from the short and simple statement “This is the truth” to the conclusion that, “In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nohting much is ever very true” (O’Brien, 428). These two statements frame the entire irony of the story, from its beginning to its end. Almost like the popular saying “A wise man admits that he knows nothing.”

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    “In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness.” Pg. 71 This is very true. It follows the saying “You can’t handle the truth” because if one hears it, they think it’s a lie, or the truth being stretched. The use of imagery allows the author to express the emotion he had when he was at war.

    Read More

  • The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

    768 Words  | 2 Pages

    On December 10, 1950, in Stockholm, Sweden, one of the greatest literary minds of the twentieth century, William Faulkner, presented his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. If one reads in between the lines of this acceptance speech, they can detect a certain message – more of a cry or plead – aimed directly to adolescent authors and writers, and that message is to be the voice of your own generation; write about things with true importance. This also means that authors should include heart, soul, spirit, and raw, truthful emotion into their writing. “Love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” (Faulkner) should all be frequently embraced – it is the duty of authors to do so. If these young and adolescent authors ignore this message and duty, the already endangered state of literature will continue to diminish until its unfortunate extinction.

    Read More

  • The Real War Summary

    685 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Good Soldiers by David Finkel

    967 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • O'Brien's Things They Carried Essay: Truth, Fiction, and Human Emotion

    1260 Words  | 3 Pages

    By incorporating this sense of failure into fictional events, O'Brien is able to communicate the true human emotion behind the story, rather than just the facts. Above and beyond a simple set of war stories, The Things They Carried reduces fiction to the very heart of why stories are told the way they are. Works Cited:.. O'Brien, Tim. A.

    Read More

  • Decoding War's Truths: A Review of Tim O’Brien’s Novels

    1232 Words  | 3 Pages

    The truth behind stories is not always what happened, with each person’s perspective is where their truth lies. At 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.

    Read More

  • The Meaning of “Story-Truth” and “Happening-Truth”

    1005 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Loss of soldier identity

    2537 Words  | 6 Pages

    ...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam War.

    Read More

  • The Wreck of Time, How to Tell a True War Story, and Into the Wild

    1669 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...ing their articulation, they try to make the readers reflect their emotions. Dillard mainly uses her tone to portray her ideas. Krakauer uses contradictory views of other people and his own thoughts to evaluate the journey of McCandless. O’Brien illustrates war stories and emotions created due to war stories on different plots. All these authors use diction in certain parts of their text to make their argument peculiar. They use contradictory views to make the reader choose the view that is correct for him/her, instead of forcing a conclusion on them.

    Read More

  • Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong, By Tim O Brien: A True War Story

    656 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tim O’Brien’s ultimate purpose is to detract the fine line between fiction and reality. In order to fully grasp what a true war story consists of, the definition of true must be deciphered. O’Brien seems to believe that it does not need to be pure facts. Instead, it is mostly found in the imagination of the individual. Readers need to receive a story based on the truth in its overall purpose and meaning. It just needs to feel true. The author implies that it is not important whether the event actually occurred or not, because if the reader wants to believe it that badly, the feeling of truth will always be present.

    Read More

  • Distortion of Truth in Tim O’Brien's The Things They Carried

    743 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about The Writer's Duty Essay

Open Document