The Things They Carried: What is the Truth?
Although the blog posts for the first books aren't due until July 20th, I want to give you the opportunity to begin posting for the last book in case you're ready. To begin, I must confess that this is one of my favorite books. We'll be rolling up our sleeves in writing workshop this year and writing in many genres, and O'Brien has that storytelling magic that we will strive to imitate in our own ways, as we tell our own stories. As you read this book, think about this question: What are the things you carry (both literal and figurative)? Are these things a help or a burden to you? Why do you carry them? Hmmm...that sounds like a good creative writing assignment for the beginning of the year if I do say so myself.
The narrator of The Things They Carried has the same name as the book's author. How did this affect your response to the book? As you read, think about O'Brien's claim, "A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth." Although this is a work of fiction, does it indeed tell the "truth"? How so?
In "How to Tell a True War Story," what does the narrator say on this subject? What do you think makes a true war story?
In "Good Form," the narrator says, "I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth." What does he mean by "story truth" and "happening-truth"? Why might one be "truer" than the other?
When talking about how to tell a true war story, the narrator states, “A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done.” The narrator also says that any true war story has an allegiance to obscenity and evil. I’m not completely sure what he means by this, whether it be that all war stories have a hidden evil or that any war story with a happy ending is untrue. Personally, after reading the chapter, I think a true war story is part fiction and part fact, if that makes sense. The person telling the story believes it completely, but much of it is just how they interpreted the events in the story. The narrator kept saying how, in the heat of the moment, a lot of details are missed and some things seem to happen, even though they may not happen in reality. So, some war stories are just told from the perspective of the person who was there, and represents how things seemed to that individual. According to the narrator, true war stories never end. They are the stories that end with the soldier back home, still constantly thinking about the war and the friends he or she lost. Overall, a true war story is rare, dishonest, evil, and never ending, just like the war that created it.
ReplyDeleteThe author did not hide behind a fictional character to tell his own version of events. Tim O’Brien described the setting with great details, and each chapter had the depth and emotions of the supporting characters. My favorite chapter included “On the Rainy River” and “Ambush.” I believe the novel does tell the truth to an extent. Some of the stories may have been “spiced up”, but they sound like the war stories that other veterans also experienced. I interviewed a Vietnam veteran for a school project, and his versions of the war were similar to Tim O’Brien’s story.
ReplyDeleteTim O’Brien says a quality war story consists of accuracy and lies. Some of his stories focus on the beauty of the land instead of the horrors of Vietnam. A true war story would be telling the story without alternating any of the details. Even though everyone experiences the events differently, all of the soldiers share similar thoughts about Vietnam. The “story truth” could not be the actual truth, but the “happening truth” actually occurred. Tim O’Brien seems to be a reliable and truthful narrator; he could have made up some of the stories and characters.
In "How to Tell a True War Story" O'Brien says "There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil." My opinion is that war is scary, painful, and not a easy thing to go through. I think O'Brien has been in the war or knows someone that has because he knows how the soldiers felt, how they felt it in their stomachs, and that not every war story is true. O'Brien states that in war story's the most unbearable parts are true and most usual parts are not. I think the definition of a true war story lies in the hearts of the soldiers.
ReplyDeleteO'Brien gave great detail about the setting, what the men in the small squadron were like, experiences of the war, it made you feel like you with him in the foxhole or even when he was telling stories about back home it felt like you were in the passengers seat of his truck. This kind of manipulation in storytelling can give the author ability to tell a small lie to boost up the story and make it go anyway he or she wants. War stories are often told from the eyes of witnesses and witnesses sometimes have a distortion of memory and facts can easily become small twisted lies. He makes you feel like he experienced this stuff at war and was quite good at it. What stood out to me is his repetitiveness often throughout the book he might have mentioned things five times in the story and then while telling you about story truth and actual truth that made you think right away, "oh did he kill that man with the grenade or was that just a story he made up, and was Rat Kiley's story even logical? It could happen but how likely, although some people are crazy enough to do it so you really never know how factual a story is, but it is the idea of a satisfactory ending that entices listeners and makes them want to hear more good or bad they are never dissatisfied with it. With war stories you want to know that someone did something for the betterment of society no matter how small you always want it to come out good, in death you want to know they died for a cause, in living they saved lives and took the bad guys life, it is all just about satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Tim O'Brien is both the author and narrator of The Things They Carried makes the story seem much more realistic to me. I believe that although this novel is fiction, it has more truth than I would have expected. O'Brien (as a character) tells stories about his friends at war. In these stories, a reader can find truth in each of them. This is exemplified when he tells about Mark Fossie's girlfriend. Mary Anne comes out to Vietnam to see Fossie, and the person that she is changes drastically. This is true even though the story is not because the war does indeed change a person, and all in different ways. Another example of this so-called "truthful lie" is shown when Rat Kiley writes a deceased friend's sister about her brother's death. When she never replies, it is shown that not everything a person anticipates will happen may end up occurring. This ties over to the chapter "How to Tell a True War Story." O'Brien explains how he believes that a true war story has no moral, how it does not suggest models of proper human behavior, etc. This made the story about the sister never writing Kiley back seem all the more real. I would have imagined a fictional story to have stories like that to end sweetly. True war stories do not have moral. However, maybe the characters in the stories do.
ReplyDeleteIn "Good Form," it is said that story-truth may be more true than happening-truth. This is for the reason that you can tell a story the way it happened and have listeners feel absolutely nothing (except maybe some disappointment). However, you could tell a more elaborate story that is stretched from the truth, but makes the listeners feel what you felt when it happened to you. This is what O'Brien did when telling the story about the man he killed. He could not have told how he felt about that man without describing things that readers would react similarly to.
The character Tim O'Brien having the same name as the author makes the stories and the experiences found in "The Things They Carried" seem all the more real. "The Things They Carried" tells the truth because it isn't about the United States and it isn't about Vietnam. It's about people. It's about experiences-- real or fiction, the experiences an author takes an audience on is what makes literature amazing. "The Things They Carried" tells the truth because it has the ability to let the reader experience the War and how it changed and took people-- literally and figuratively.
ReplyDeleteIn "How to Tell a True War Story," the narrator comes right out and says that there is no moral to a true war story and it is in no way virtuous. What makes a war story true is the human behind it. The emotions and experiences of the human behind any war story is what makes it true. War is a scary thing, every bystander knows it. What makes a war story true is the flaws of the soldier, whether those flaws come from being fearful or too anxious to fight. A war story is true when a civillian knows that there is a flawed human and not an untouchable hero behind it, who experienced it.
In "Good Form," the narrator states that story-truth is different from happening-truth. Story-truth is what the narrator felt, the aftermath of what he experienced laced with the guilt piling on top of him. Happening-truth is the facts, the physical evidence of what happened. Story-truth is what was felt, happening-truth is the evidence of why the narrator felt that way. Both are true, but one only has the ability to make the other a lie. Happening-truth can make story-truth a lie, because it is fact. Story-truth, though, adds the life to the fact and makes the experience true.
The things I carry are regrets and things from my past, in a way they help me and are a burden to carry. I think the reason I carry them is so that I don't make the same mistakes in the future kind of like a life learning moment from the past. Even though the book is made up I do think it holds some truth. Everyone carries things in this world some are good and some are bad, the trick though is to not let them define you as a person. I think that "story-truth" can be real or not real, but "happening-truth" Is real because you can physically see it and know it is happening right then and there.
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ReplyDeleteExperience is the only true thing that a story teller needs to make the listener feel real emotions from a story. "Happening-truth" is the experience that the story teller went through, and what regrets or mistakes that they have from that experience. "Story-truth" is when the story teller uses the truth from the actual experience and mixes it with some over-exaggerated ideas to make the story seem more exciting. Now knowing the two differences between those truths, I can honestly say that a true war story is best told from the memories of the ones who didn't live to see the end of the war. The people who knew them well and experienced the war with them could tell the story without adding little fibs and exaggerations to the details. Knowing the truth and seeing the truth as you want to see it are why people have a hard time with telling war stories. No one wants to sit around and hear about the gore of war, but of how the war changed some of the soldiers from the beginning to the end.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between happening-truth and story-truth is that the happening-truth in a war is consumed with emotions like fear and disgust. The story-truth of the same event lets you input some of your afterthoughts and pinpoint your fears other than not dying. The entire point of a story is to try to pinpoint an emotion and really drive it home. If that means exaggerate a little, then do it. A true war story is not all of the explosions and the cross fire and the blood. It's not the happening-truth. A true war story tells a lesson and is what happened after and how the people in the story changed, for better or for worse.
ReplyDeleteEven though this is a work of fiction, I believe it still is true by its own definition of truth for many reasons. It manages to convey the emotions and feelings of being in war better then any straight fact nonfiction book on the Vietnam War could. While a nonfiction book is more true to the facts, O'Brien's book puts me in the action and even the day to day life of being a soldier.Secondly, It captures the attitudes of the soldiers towards the conflict. Many of the men in O'Brien's squad wanted no part in the war including O'Brien. Lastly, it conveyed the affects of the war after the war better then any non-fiction book could. For example, the man who returns home and simply drives around and eventually commits suicide was very truthful to me while being fictional. This book managed to blur fact and fiction but did so in a way that made it seem more truthful then any nonfiction book.
ReplyDeleteEven though this is a work of fiction, I believe it still is true by its own definition of truth for many reasons. It manages to convey the emotions and feelings of being in war better then any straight fact nonfiction book on the Vietnam War could. While a nonfiction book is more true to the facts, O'Brien's book puts me in the action and even the day to day life of being a soldier.Secondly, It captures the attitudes of the soldiers towards the conflict. Many of the men in O'Brien's squad wanted no part in the war including O'Brien. Lastly, it conveyed the affects of the war after the war better then any non-fiction book could. For example, the man who returns home and simply drives around and eventually commits suicide was very truthful to me while being fictional. This book managed to blur fact and fiction but did so in a way that made it seem more truthful then any nonfiction book.
ReplyDeleteThe way that the author has the same name as the narrator in the story makes the story feel more alive and true. With O'Brien's claim "A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth," it tells that even in fiction the truth can be still be given, and in this case it is given through morals in the stories throughout the book.
ReplyDeleteO'Brien says that the way a true war story is old cannot be moral or instruct, and if it does either of those things it isn't a true war story. He also says that a true war story can be told apart from a fake one "by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil." I'm not sure what could make a true war story, many people are able to make a war story up and people will believe it while others won't. It is possible that a true war story could never be made because of how much emotion actually goes into the war the whole feeling of it might not actually come out in the story right.
The difference between "story-truth" and "happening-truth" is that "happening-truth has all of the actual emotion and feeling in it while the "story-truth" is just the words coming out of someone's mouth telling a story. The "happening-truth" is truer than the "story-truth" because in the "happening-truth" everything is actually happening around someone and reality is happening, while in the "story-truth" nothing is actually happening, it is an event of the past.
When finding out that the main character had the same name as the narrator I automatically thought they were the same person and that the experiences in the novel were personal. I definitely felt much more sympathy for all the characters in the book because I assumed that they all came from O'Brien's past. The part of the book that made finally me stop and think about it was when O'Brien spoke about how every war story is not entirely true. After reading that straight from the author I began to be wary of the rest of the stories to come. I began to question the reliability of the stories, but I guess that is all this book really is. O'Brien seems to be consumed with the art of storytelling and making sure the delivery is exactly perfect. As O'Brien tries to perfect the stories, he realizes the difference between the "story-truth" and the "happening-truth". I think that what he means by that, the "story-truth" is exactly how he personally felt. If you ask anyone what happened, they would tell the "story-truth" about the story from their perspective. The "story-truth" may involve how the sun danced on their skin as the ran or how it was so quiet you could hear every heartbeat. The other fun part about a "story-truth" is that there is never a wrong story truth. As long as that is how you felt when the action occurred, then you are honest. The "happening-truth" is often far less fun to hear and less hard to sympathize with. For example instead of the sun dancing on their skin, it is simply that it was a sunny day. The "happening-truth" is very blunt and straightforward. There is nothing dazzling about the story, just the facts. I believe that the "story-truth" is often less accurate than the “happening-truth” because the “happening-truth” is just the facts. However, as a reader, I prefer the “story-truths” because they are more personal.
ReplyDeleteI believe that since O'Brien is both the narrator and the author, this fact helps bridge the gap between fiction and reality in the story. The author describes many things that contribute to "a true war story." There can not be any loose ends in a story, feelings that change the tone as a story is told, and the story must never seem to have a true end. O'Brien also stresses how a story must have moral when he writes "In a true war story, if there's moral at all, it's like the thread that makes the cloth. You can't tease it out. You can't extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning." I agree that all these elements contribute to "a true war story," but i also believe that a story can only be true, but if two people were to go through the same scenario, they would tell a story about it differently and their feelings or mental state might skew the story one way or another so it's hard to say one thing happened an exact way. I also believe that everybody has a different perception of how true a "true war story" can be.
ReplyDeleteI beleive this story is not a lie because it basically just tells us what he felt. A true war story tells about how the person experiencing felt. It doesnt have to be the exact science, all that matters is how the person writing it writes how he felt. A true story can have things completely off course because if he writes about something that happened to somebody else that person might have felt it differently, therefore making not as ture as something he experienced himself.
ReplyDeleteI believe that since O'Brien is both the narrator and the author, this fact helps bridge the gap between fiction and reality in the story. The author describes many things that contribute to "a true war story." There can not be any loose ends in a story, feelings that change the tone as a story is told, and the story must never seem to have a true end. O'Brien also stresses how a story must have moral when he writes "In a true war story, if there's moral at all, it's like the thread that makes the cloth. You can't tease it out. You can't extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning." I agree that all these elements contribute to "a true war story," but i also believe that a story can only be true, but if two people were to go through the same scenario, they would tell a story about it differently and their feelings or mental state might skew the story one way or another so it's hard to say one thing happened an exact way. I also believe that everybody has a different perception of how true a "true war story" can be.
ReplyDeleteI think that the narrator bearing the same name as the author helps the story to feel more real. If you don't think about it, you can forget that what you are reading is fictional. You feel as if you are listening to a veteran telling his story of the war, not like you are reading a novel.
ReplyDeleteEven though it is fiction, I think the book is truth, because truth isn't a matter of what happened, when it happened, and why it happened. Truth is all in the mind - we all have our own version of what's real and what's just fantasy. When we recall an event we were at, we don't remember exactly what was going on - we remember what it felt like to be there. Names, dates, and events don't matter to us; what leaves an impression is emotion. Fear, joy, anger - it all leaves an impression on the mind, one that is far stronger than an impression left by reality. That is why the book is the truth; even though the events are fake, the feelings are completely real, because no one can define emotion.
In "How to Tell a True War Story," the narrator says, "You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, "Is it true?" If the answer matters, you've got your answer." Whether or not something really happened has nothing to do with whether or not the story is true. If something leaves an impression on you, it's just as true as reality.
As far as what the narrator says in "Good Form," I agree. Although happening-truth is reality, it doesn't always matter. Story-truth, however, always matters, because it's meant to leave an impression on you. Reality doesn't aim to teach you a lesson; sure, it might, but that's not a guarantee. Stories always leave a mark, because that's what they are intended to do. They are meant to leave an impression, to teach you something. Reality's only purpose is to exist, which is why fiction is often much truer than fact.
The same name makes you not think this is a fictional book. I feel these stories are truer then the truth and this book is actually non-fiction. It seems true because each story and person are explained so well its like that person telling it cannot be making it up. They explain the characters so well and so deep that it seems they were the authors good friends. Story truth is probably like the cut version of a R rated movie. Not only filtered but told in a way were you actually understand and believe what your listening to. Then there is happening truth and it's probably a uncut no filter story. To where you cannot believe what your hearing and you think this vet is messing with you and that it's all made up, but in fact it is more true. Happening truth is more truer because the vet is speaking it just like they were there as it was happening right in front of their eyes.
ReplyDeleteIn "How To Tell a True War Story" the narrator says that "there is no moral to the story and if it seems like there is a moral the story is probably false". The narrator was trying to say how cruel wars actually are and how people in war can be. There is no proper behavior in wars and they often bring out the worst in human nature. Just like any story everyone has their own interpretation on what happened. But I feel like the best way to tell a war story is to tell it the unfiltered way. Tell it to others exactly how it happened before your eyes, tell the truth because as the author said in war stories you should not feel uplifted by them.
ReplyDeleteYour interpretation of the narrators message is exactly the same as my interpretation. War is cruel and frequently brings out the worst in people, an example of the effects of war are the internment camps that were created by the United States government in World War II. However I feel as though it is not in human nature to just "tell it as it is" because people always want to elevate themselves above others. Therefore I feel as though we need to listen to both sides and examin the evidence rather then listen to peoples interpretation of events.
DeleteTo me trying to figure out how a story-truth could be truer than a happening-truth was difficult. When thinking of people telling stories I think that people always elaborate and exaggerate to where a story is nothing like what truly happened, but after I really thought about it I came to a point where I can agree that a story-truth is truer. To me a happening-truth is a quick and not very detailed description of an event. Whereas a story-truth is well thought about and remembered to where it contains more detail. When someone tells a story it leads them to think deeper into the event, by doing so a person remembers more like the weather or scenery or anything they might have just forgotten because it wasn't of high importance. Also a story teller wants the details they want a good story so they'll put more into it. The happening-truth and the story-truth are both true but since the story-truth contains more details and descriptions it can be thought of as being truer because it has more true facts to it.
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