When we enter into a world of fiction, we know what we are reading is not true. We know that the world is fabricated at least to some extent. Sometimes that world hits close to home and may be eerily accurate, but it is still fabricated. A good story will take us away from the real world around us and put us in this fabricated fictional world so that we believe everything that is said. The Things They Carried does exactly that, and because it is so realistic, not only in plot, setting, in dialog, we react negatively when the author tells us that this is made up and that every story is fake. Then, in the next paragraph he goes on to lie to us again, and we fall for it. We do not like being openly lied to or deceived, even if the story is supposed to take us away from the real world. As readers, we just do not know how to handle being reminded of that. In O’Brien’s book we know that he is an effective writer because even after he tells us that he is fabricating the entire story we still believe him in the remaining chapters and that is only because he is a good storyteller. How and why people tell stories depends on the person, and how effective they are depends on their ability to communicate with others and their control over language. In the novel we see the narrator struggle with how to tell a story and how to tell it properly.
The truth does not matter and what is important in the story varies from person to person. The story about the baby water buffalo, people take it too ways; either you feel awful for the baby animal or for the human who just died. You cannot predict how people will react. Everyone has their own life experiences that allow them to read things in a different light. The one thing this story does universally is show us how much a human can truly carry, whether it is physical, emotional, or spiritual. And that has to do with how real the story is. It does not matter that the story has real events in it, Harry Potter can be believable and it is clearly a fictional series. The characters are believable, the events, the emotion is so true, honest, and bare that we cannot help but believe in the characters and feel their pain. For the characters the story is true, and while we are invested in the book we believe them and they are real, even if it is only while we turn the pages.
I think you make a really interesting point when you said that readers do not like being openly deceived. It sort of reminded me of that myth that says if you put a frog in boiling water it will sense the hot water and immediately jump out; yet, if you put it into cold water and very gradually turn up the temperature in the water the frog won’t notice and will stay in until it has boiled to death. I'm not comparing being lied to as a deathly situation, but I find the two things similar. If O'Brien had somehow eased us into that fact he was fabricating some of his stories then I think we wouldn't care as much. The fact that he had bluntly stated "I'm lying" scared us just as the boiling water frightened the frog. I thought that I would point that out because it's an interesting parallel.
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