This chapter emphasized the notion that a war story has blurred lines of what is true and what is untrue. Things in war can be happening very quickly, making it hard to determine exactly what is going on. Therefore it may be hard to recall an accurate depiction of what exactly happened. O'Brien says himself, "In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen" (67). I think this is applicable to any story about a real event that took place, not just war stories. The individual telling the story may skew the details or exaggerate something to make themselves or another person be perceived in a certain way. This would cause us to question the validity of many nonfiction stories. I also thought it was interesting how O'Brien said that a true war story never generalizes, because if you generalize then almost everything is true, but at the same time almost nothing is true. War stories shouldn't be abstract or analytical, and most war stories don't have a point. Does this book fulfill the requirements for a true war story?
Monday, February 17, 2014
Truth in Stories
I tried to start reading The Things They Carried without questioning the truth in the book or whether I was being manipulated by the author. It worked well until I reached the chapter titled "How to Tell a True War Story". I had been reading through the book in the mindset that it was non-fiction, or at least that the fictitious narrator was telling true stories from his life. As soon as I read the first sentence, "This is true", I questioned everything I had read before. If this story was true, were other stories untrue? And if so, which ones?
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I think this book does fulfill the requirements for a war story, because it includes a mix of details and hyperbole. These details usually come from other people, and the hyperbole usually involve replacing their name with yours and making your story just a little bigger. This lack of adherence to the "textbook truth" is also what prevents this book from being moralistic, because "borrowed" stories are always told at dinner parties, and family events for plain entertainment. They never carry a moral, and are told for entertainment, because the inherent disingenuous roots of these stories prevent the tellers from standing behind them. As many outdoors-men can attest, many of our campfire stories come from many nights of listening to other campfire stories and cobbling together the most interesting ones. I think in a similar thread, many war stories come from platoons meeting at camps and sharing their wildest stories. Therefore, I think that Tim O'Brien's collection of "his" war stories is truly just one war story. He never takes some moralistic stand, or makes some philosophical argument, he just states stories.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the mere fact that you are questioning the truthfulness of O'Brien's story is a mere indication that O'Brien's story--or stories--are in fact true war stories. In the chapter "How to Tell a True War Story", the narrator tells us that a true war story does not rely on absolute occurrence. In other words, the truthfulness of his stories doesn't matter. Instead, O'Brien repeatedly indicates in his text that the action of any story is to make the reader or audience feel. Therefore, by showing us that the true purpose of the story is not it's validity but instead the emotions it causes within the reader, O'Brien's text therefore must be a true war story.
ReplyDeleteHowever, we are then faced with another dilemma that Janelle brought up in class on Tuesday. If O'Brien's story is a true war story, then it inherently isn't about war (according to O'Brien the narrator). We then must ask what is this story about? This is clearly a loaded question, but the mere fact that the chapter about a true war story brings it up is an indicator of the central importance of that chapter in interpreting O'Brien's (the author) purpose.