Truth vs. the Portrayal of Truth

            In an attempt to procrastinate starting this book, I looked through every page that preceded the actual story, pages that I normally pay no mind to. As I flipped to the title page, my eyes quickly caught sight of the smaller print above the author’s name: A WORK OF FICTION BY Tim O’Brien. Given the nature of this class, I would’ve assumed that it would be a fictional story. Why had O’Brien found it necessary to point this out to his readers? Wouldn’t it be obvious? Such questions immediately filled my mind, and then I began to read. And as I read, each page made me feel what I imagine to be the truths of the war. His writing is so powerful that I couldn’t help but assume the words on the pages in front of me to be truth. O’Brien’s captivating account of the war events drew me in immediately. Had I not been warned, the thought of this story being factual would have certainly crossed my mind. I began to question how much of a role his imagination had played while he was writing this. This is a story about his remembering. He tells us that stories last forever; when our memories are gone, there is nothing left to remember except the story itself. So how much truth lies in this story? How much of it is an actual recollection of the war, and how much of it is a falsification of reality?

            O’Brien himself is the main character, both a Vietnam veteran telling his experiences during the war and a writer exploring how to write a story. Having the same character involved in both factual and fictional events introduces a blurred line between truth and the portrayal of truth. Realism and fantasy are juxtaposed in a way that brings the truths of a war and the fictions of storytelling together, leaving the reader unable to know for sure which of the events truly happened to O’Brien. It is impossible for us to tell apart what is indeed fact and what is simply representing the truth as it seems. Some events are so surreal that we would dismiss them as fictional, yet it is often those that make the story seem untrue that are the exact truth. We know that O’Brien is sharing with us the harsh and gruesome realities of the war. But he tells us to be skeptical. He tells us that it is hard to differentiate between what happened and what seemed to happen. So it is up to us to decide for ourselves where the truth lies in this story.