Story-truth versus Happening-truth in Tim OBrien's Book The Things They Carried - Essay Example

Story-truth versus Happening-truth Tim O'Brien, in his book, The Things They Carried, describes two different kinds of truth, story-truth and happening-truth. He describes story-truth something that "makes things present" (O'Brien 180). He describes happening-truth as reality, as what actually happened. However, for O'Brien, story-truth is more true than happening-truth, for several reasons. While happening-truth may be what literally happened at war, the fighting, the death, the destruction; it loses everything that makes it human to describe war that way. Story-truth, on the other hand, allows the listener to be there, with the narrator in the present, and see how things were. Story-truth allows for the emotion of war to be the truth, and not just the action. O'Brien uses both types of truth in his writing, to emphasis the difference, and to help the reader see that through emotion, difficult circumstances, and distant reality that story-truth comes much closer to actual truth than happening-truth. O'Brien regularly uses story-truth as a way to show the emotional connections between the soldiers, and also the emotional burden that they share both when a fellow soldier dies, and when one of them kills an enemy soldier. One of the clearest examples of story-truth is in the description of the young Vietnamese soldier that was killed near My Khe. The first time the reader sees the story, they read about the other soldiers applauding the kill, and how well he had done, while he focuses on the injuries, and the shapes they represented to him. While the other soldiers saw his work as successful, he could only imagine what the young man had been like before he died. We are even taken into the other soldier's life, and shown that he is a pacifist, who does not want to be there (a reflection of O'Brien's own desire not to be there). The second time the reader encounters the story, the actual kill is described, the throwing of the grenade and the shock when the man actually died. The third time, the reader is told that O'Brien did not actually throw the grenade, he had only watched. The happening-truth would only tell the reader how the man had died. By creating a story-truth, the reader is allowed to see that the whole troop could feel the young man's death, and how profound an impact that had on even those who did not make the kill. O'Brien, for example, feels as if he did, simply by being there and not stopping it. The story comes to life, and in many ways, who had killed the man no longer matters. What matters is how the men felt, and reacted to the event. That man may never have even existed, or been a compilation of several kills, but the feelings would have been the same each time. Those are the story-truth, and the real truth, because they are what last. During the story, O'Brien allows the reader to see that war is not all medals and victory. He allows the reader inside, to see the tragedy, the death, and the plain humanity of those who go to war. For Vietnam, especially, many of the men fighting did not want to be there, and when they returned home, they did not know what to do with themselves. In Speaking of Courage, a story-truth, O'Brien takes a story about one man, and his hopelessness after the war, and helps his readers to feel the despair, and the strong feeling of being lost so many soldiers have when they return. His character imagines a conversation about the war, in which he could have won a medal. Except that nobody asked to hear the story. For the veterans, few people want to remember the war, and they had no way to share all the turmoil inside. These circumstances are impossible to show in happening-truth, since they only share the physical happenings. By making the story universal, everyone feels what it is like to be lost, and trapped inside their head. Throughout the book, a sort of distant reality is created for the reader. Distant, because although you can see the pain, and feel the emotion, it is hazy, and unclear what really happened. Did Tim kill the Vietnam man, or someone else Was Norman at fault for Kiowa's death, or Tim, or Lieutenant Cross The reader is never told, and because blame is shifted so many times in the book for each event, the story itself takes on a new meaning. It is nobody's story, and so it is everybody's story. It is nobody's truth, and so it is everybody's truth. By forcing reality of events out of the way, the events take on a new, stronger meaner. Each death is not one, but all. Each emotion is shared, and each person becomes not a person, but a symbol. One dead Vietnamese soldier can represent everyone who died. One soldier who is lost and kills himself every soldier who could not find themselves again. Story-truth is truth, because it belongs to everyone. O'Brien creates in his book a story that is no more then that, and yet, is everything more than that. His story represents not just his unit, and not just his life at war, but life at war for everyone. By removing the happening-reality, the reader can connect to the story, by finding similarities between the soldiers and themselves. By making the story less important, the story-truth is allowed to share emotion, and passion, and reality. Story-truth is truth, through emotion, and difficulties, and reality, because it can belong to each and every soldier who fought, and not just those named in the book. Happening-truth is only true for the moment it actually happens; story-truth is what is true from then until eternity. Structure and Form in The Things They Carried The first thing a reader notices in The Things They Carried is that the book seems to leave the topic very quickly. Although it starts out plainly, describing what each soldier had in their pack; it quickly takes off from there, leaving the physical things in the past. One of the primary tools Tim O'Brien uses in the creation of his book is the seemingly random way the stories fit together. No chapter is the same, and the stories seem jumbled together in a haphazard fashion. In fact, it would not be far-fetched to consider this book a series of short stories, tied together by topic, rather than a single novel. However, by creating a novel without pattern, O'Brien allows the reader to more fully comprehend the chaos and disorder that combat can leave in a person's mind. By allowing stories to appear randomly, varying the lengths of his chapters, and by using informal language throughout the book, O'Brien creates a work that is not only emotionally charged in language, but also in form. The apparent randomness of the stories that O'Brien shares suggests to the reader that no one story is any more important than the other. For O'Brien, this would be a key tool, since each story is about the lives and deaths of people he cared very much about. To suggest that one death was more important than another would have taken away the symbolic meaning of each death, and the totality of the war that they represented. The randomness, and the repetition of each story several times also creates a timelessness about the war, as if each story could have (and did) happen several times, and this is only one recollection of it. Since each story does not build on the next, the reader has to enter each one with a new context, and is not able to carry with them a set understanding that this is a chronological recollection of war. Instead, they see the emotion that war creates, and the turmoil, as each story changes ever so slightly on each retelling, enough to make the reader doubt their first reading of it. Each story takes on a life, and as the reader becomes more lost, they have no choice but to focus on the raw moments of emotion, the feelings for which the book was created. Chapter length also plays a key role in the creation of chaos throughout the book. Where one chapter is long, the next might be extremely short, which is very disconcerting for the reader. By shifting time, and breaking up stories at odd intervals the reader is unable to discern a pattern to what they are reading, and are unable to find a rhythm. O'Brien is creating for the reader this sense of loss, and lack of understanding. Because the war itself had no rhythm, and emotion has no order, it is important to keep the reader from settling comfortably into the book, when the whole idea is to make the reader uncomfortable, and keep them from finding a pace at which the book can just slip by, unnoticed. By keeping the reader on their toes, O'Brien creates enough discomfort that the reader has to find something in the book which stays consistent, which is emotion. O'Brien only allows the reader to feel the emotions that are consistent throughout the war, and not the monotony of day to day life. While he could have allowed the readers to fall into a daze with the daily hikes, he instead forced them to fall into the daily emotion, and see just how much the war affected them. The reader leaves the book dazed, but not from boredom, from the overwhelming attack on their feelings. Unlike many war books, O'Brien does not bog the reader down in tactical language, military hierarchy, or battles won and lost. Instead, he focuses on the war from the human side, and stays with the language that the people out in the fields who really fought used. He does not make it pretty, and he does not make it worse. He leaves it plain and clear. In using language such as "shit field" and "gooks" he allows the reader to understand that war is not pretty. It is not about medals won, or cities secured. It is about burning villages to the ground, having tea with dead men, and camping all night in a field of human shit. It is ugly, and miserable, and worse than any human being can create with their imagination. If he had changed the words and said human waste, and Vietnamese, everything would have been politically correct, and the reader would be able to skim over the ugly parts, and miss the meaning. For O'Brien, there was nothing pretty about war, and his language reflects that. By creating chaos, and confusion, O'Brien was able to create a clearer view of what war was really like, and make it more understandable to the reader. Instead of being a watered down boring soldier's tale, it is a story of filth and death, of loss and anger, of laughter, and youth. The very style of the book forces the reader off guard, and makes it difficult to be comfortable with what they are reading. The Things They Carried is not about the packs, or guns, or shoes. It is about the psychological traumas, the emotional misery, and the loss of self that these young men carried with them not just in war, but throughout their lives. In forcing the reader to embrace the emotional side of war, Tim O'Brien was able to make it more real, and more vivid for the reader. The chaos of the book represents the chaos war, and helps the reader understand just how bad it was in Vietnam. How can Writing save a Life At the end of The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien suggests that this book is Tim trying to save Timmy's life. While it is clear that Timmy is still physically alive (as he is now the adult Tim), for O'Brien, life means more than simply breathing. He makes reference earlier in the book to how his friend Norman felt he could not get the war out. In fact, Norman suggests to Tim in a letter that he write Norman's story. Tim realizes then, that his way of dealing with the war and what has happened has been through his writing. By writing, O'Brien is trying to find a release from the war, a way to help others understand, and a way to find the person in him, "Timmy" who he lost when he went to war. Timmy's life means the person who O'Brien was before the war, the person that he desperately wants to be again, who does not spend every waking moment writing about, thinking about, dreaming about the war. To save Timmy's life is to bring back the little boy who never got to become a man, just like Linda never got to become a woman. For him, saving a life is about sharing himself before the war, during the war, and by showing those, creating what he hopes to be now. Throughout his book, O'Brien makes references to youth, and how so many soldiers were very young when they came to way. He tells the story of Curt Lemon, and how he died because he and a friend were playing. They were not dumb, just young. He tells the story of Mary Anne, and how she came to war young, and then was lost. He also tells the story of himself, and who he was before the war. How he was young, successful, ready for graduate school and life. That Tim, or Timmy, had a very different life ahead of him. His future was assured; he would be happy, and successful. Then, he was drafted. For O'Brien, that marked the end of who he could have been, and took Timmy and locked him away. For many soldiers, the war was the end of their youth. When O'Brien describes the war, he describes the pain of being there, and the loss and hopelessness. But he also shares that they laughed together, and shared bonds, and played games. O'Brien creates for the reader, and for himself, an understanding of just how young these men were. They were still boys, still wanting to have fun and be careless. When he shares the story of Mary Anne, and her turn from youthful innocence to wild and deadly, it is less about her, and more about what happens to the spirit of the young men. She is, at first, only a thought and a dream. And then, she arrives and is everything they can imagine: young and fresh and eager. However, war changes even her, and her spirit changes. She no longer wants kids and a home; she wants what is here and now. As she changes, the people around her find her less enjoyable, and want her to change back. Finally, she disappears, unable to handle being young and fresh and eager anymore. Like the soldiers when they returned home from war, who she was no longer existed, although that is what people wanted to see. Her story is an illusion for what happened to all of them, their loss of innocence, and the expectation that the war would not change them. The boys in Vietnam wanted a happy ending to the story, but Rat would not give them one, because he did not have one. Neither would they. Near the end of the book, O'Brien returns to a memory from his childhood. He describes his relationship with a little girl named Linda. They are nine years old, and he thinks they are in love. And then she dies. However, Timmy is able to keep Linda alive, although not in body, in spirit, because he can imagine her and have conversations with her. By writing her story, she becomes alive for everyone else. In writing his own war stories, O'Brien is able to make them real for others, and also let out a little bit of what he has inside him. Early in the book, as an apparent non-sequitur, O'Brien reminisces about when his daughter asked him to write about anything other than war. She does not understand why he thinks about it all the time. It consumes him, and so any other part of him is lost, other than the war stories. By writing Timmy, and memories of who he was before the war, O'Brien is allowing those memories some validity, and allowing them to have a place back in who he is. Saving Timmy's life is less about saving the old Timmy than saving who he is today. By writing his past and present, O'Brien is allowing himself to determine his future. To save Timmy, he must write about who Timmy was, before the war. Before the anger, and the loss, and the death. He has to write about innocent Timmy who would have been successful, had he not been drafted. Because somewhere inside of himself is that Timmy, and he needs to keep that alive, or the war will consume him. His friend Norman hung himself when he could not let go of the war. For him, little Normy was already dead. Tim O'Brien had to write The Things They Carried, to remember friends, and lost innocence, and the war. But most importantly, he had to write this book to save himself. Works Cited O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Read More