The terror of Imagination

In Tim O’brien’s, The Things They Carried, O’brien devotes an entire chapter to give us a guide to how we should read this book. He carefully outlines how feelings, content, and language make it a “true or untrue war” story. He brings to light a major idea that comes up when one is reading a war story, belief versus skepticism. He says on page 68, “In many cases a true story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical.” (O’brien) He gives us notice, that not everything mentioned in the book is fact. The concept that a true war story cannot be believed, holds a similar nature to the actual experience of war. Even when experiences and events are written in the most descriptive and realistic language, war cannot be tangible and truly felt until one experiences, first hand, war. The truth behind war is polluted, undefined, and appears completely unrealistic. Because of the ambiguity with war, both solider and reader has an unawareness of the truth behind what is actually going on. This unintentional and intentional oblivion makes us so vulnerable to believe in the truth and moral of war, even when there is absolutely none.  O’brien continues to comment on this idea when he says, “ It’s a question of credibility. Often the crazy is true and the normal stuff isn’t, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness.” (O’brien, 68) O’brien alludes to this idea of how we tend to believe in the normal and ignore and undervalue the “crazy” or “unreliable”. In war, there is no normal. Yes, there may be logical explanation, but the ability to believe in the "normal" is undermined because war brings out the crazy and unrealistic. It brings out the terror of the imagination, and the impossibility to differentiate reality and illusion. O’brien intentionally puts war in this fanciful context, to direct us to see that the extremes and impossible are the truth behind the "real" consequences and effects of a “real” war.