Feeling the Way They Felt

"He [Rat] wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt (84)."

Is a story, or a memory, a lie because it is embellished? Because it is enhanced with detail, with passion? Does a story even need to happen the way it is told for someone to fully understand and comprehend that moment in time? I believe that a story doesn't always need to be made of 100 percent truth, and that it can be blasted with an almost false detail in order truthful.

Why do we tell stories? We tell stories in order to re-enact a moment in our life that we feel was extraordinary, even sometimes in the smallest way. We want to make the listener feel how we felt when we were there. We want them to feel happy, sad, excited, annoyed, anxious; we want them to feel the emotions we felt. Whether your describing a funny thing that happened today, a sports event in your life, or the oddest thing that happened to you the other day, you will find that you tend to, without even thinking about it, embellish the story and add details in to make it more full of a story. And when you feel as if the listener isn't understanding, isn't feeling the same emotions as you felt at that time, is it not so that you start to embellish your stories just a little more. This is because stories are not about the words or the actions, but about the emotions of the moment and the feelings that are created.

This is why I believe that, although The Things They Carried is a piece of fiction, it is more non-fiction then lies. Tim O'Brien isn't trying to show you what happened to these men. He isn't trying to tell you what they carried, how they felt when comrades died, how they reacted to women they love and even how the forest looked around them. He is trying to make you feel the emotions that these soldiers carried (The Things They Carried?) during Vietnam. He wants you to feel how it feels to know the one you love doesn't love you back, to feel the pain of loosing a brother, to feel the confusion of the land, to feel the emotions of the soldiers. This is what makes O’Brien’s book more of a memoir then his actually memoir. It’s the emotions.