Telling a
war story, as Tim O’Brien clearly elaborates for us, is quite difficult,
especially when the audience has never experienced anything quite like it.
Whether or not we get the full effect intended, war stories always leave us
with a feeling for the utter chaos and irrationality of war. It’s curious,
though, that when comparing completely different literature about war we end up
with the same result.
Look at
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, for example. A clear satire, the novel
is intended to make us laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation. The Things They Carried on the other
hand, relates war stories with a much more obviously weighty tone. Yes, we can
giggle sometimes at the sardonic remarks of the soldiers, but the whole book is
not shrouded in the same ridiculous black humor that makes up Catch-22. Rather, it is saturated with a
feeling of despair of the inescapable horrors of war. Heller obviously
exaggerates the absurdity of the situation while O’Brien keeps it much more
realistic, often blurring the line between truth and fiction.
Despite the
stark differences in these two authors’ approaches to writing about the war,
however, unexpected similarities abound. The same absurdity that exists in the
anecdotes of Yossarian’s exploits is inherent in many of O’Brien’s tales as
well. For example, the story of Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk, enemies one day
(over a simple pocket knife) and best friends the next has a very Heller-esque
feel to it.
So, even
though we know that both of these books are fiction – Heller’s even more so
than O’Brien’s (if you are willing to accept different degrees of fiction) –
neither of them are truly fictional at all. As O’Brien reminds us, something
“may not happen and be truer than true.” The portrayal of the complete senselessness
of war is what truly matters in both of these books. The approach and the tone
and the plot and whatever else the authors use to get that across vary widely,
but we are still left with the same disbelief of the horror of war.
It's like two ways of coming at the same thing -- Catch 22 probably has more truth in it than you'd like to believe, and The Things They Carried probably has less truth in it than you'd like to believe.
ReplyDeleteBut they both try to do the same thing -- use many circumloquacious stories to try and tell what war really is.
At first I felt betrayed when I realized the stories I was reading were not true. If the stories I was reading were not true, why should I pay any attention to the emotions that came along with the tale?
ReplyDeleteBut after a while I realized that O'Brien did not want us to take away the stories, he wanted us to take away the feelings so that we could experience the pains that soldiers felt in war.
Sandy, your comment reminded me of Tim's line in the chapter "How to tell a true war story" that the truth matters because "you'd feel cheated if it never happened" (83). In terms of happening truth, an untrue story "without the grounding reality [is] just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood." This statement really struck me, because it immediately brings to attention how much the general public is influenced by media such as Hollywood movies. In movies about real wars, the common disclaimer of "based on true events" shows up at the start of the movie. As viewers, however, we still have to suspend our disbelief when we watch these movies, because Hollywood has obviously added theatrical elements for entertainment value. In that respect, I believe that, aside from merely artistic reasons, Tim decides to base his stories so much on the story-truth, because a story with no basis in happening-truth can shatter the prejudices the audience may bring when reading stories based on true events.
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