“Story Truth” and “Happening Truth” in the Things They Carried

In the world of Tim O’Brien story there are many individuals who come from different walks of life. Many affected by their culture, geography, surroundings, and circumstances they have each been exposed too. In “The Things They Carried,” the characters demonstrate the challenges and struggles they face and how they attempt to conceal it inside them. In today’s world this short story can be related to the responsibilities, challenges, and struggles individuals face internally from one day to the next.

The idea of truth often correlates with facts,but facts alone cannot always convey emotional and personal truths.The concept of truth is subjective,determined by individual perspective. Within Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried various short stories of “truth” are told. Through the stories’ different narrations readers are forced to distinguish the concrete details from the muddled emotions of the events of war. Thus readers must question truth anew with each story and weigh “happening truth” against “emotional truth”

O’Brien opens “How to Tell a True War Story” simply by stating that the story “is true,” (67) and then proceeds to explain

In the book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, he explores the fine line between reality and fiction. Reality is what really happened. Fiction is fabrication of the situation. Reality is distorted when a situation is serious, emotional, and traumatic. In O'Brien experience, when telling a story from the observer's point of view, the observer unnecessarily adds details to make it more dramatic and animated. Which in turn,the incident changes the story from reality to fiction. The story teller wants the audience to experience what he felt when he experience the event. When the observer highjacks the reality of the story, the audience may not know the facts from the fiction.

Tim O’Brien outlines throughout the course of the novel a picture of what a true war story is and the characteristics thereof. First, it must be understood what O’Brien considers a true war story to be before it can be deduced how this coincides with interactions with soldiers in the Vietnam War and other wars as well. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien points out that “in any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen” (67). There is a stricken difference between the story-truth and happening-truth in war stories. The happening-truth is usually what is left out in a true war story, as the happening-truth is usually extremely hard to hear or unrelated to the correlated emotions to the story. Conversely, there is the story-truth, which soldiers use to help the reader or listener “feel what [they] felt” (O’Brien 171). Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried “[addresses] the divergence of values – the contradiction between a standard of literary authenticity and the project of moral evaluation” (Wesley 2). This gives a more in depth representation as to what a true war story is and what the novel represents. This journal on The Things They Carried also points out that “by abandoning literary realism, [the novel] comes closer to presenting a polemic vision that insists on the problematic nature of the

Several women characters are not directly in the action of the novel; however, their purpose is to give the soldiers hope, which is evident through their mementos and keepsakes. O’Brien opens up the novel with an explanation of how much Martha means to Jimmy Cross by writing, “First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack” (O’Brien 2). Letters, more specifically Martha’s, are not only mentioned in this

As many of the points presented contradict each other and the narrative, one is likely to think of a new definition of truth, being either in accordance with the author or finding their own perspective of the word. When Vietnam War veterans returned from the war, many were met with disgust and disapproval of the population for fighting the “wrong war.” In order to enlighten the “civilized world” of the feelings and burdens the soldiers carry, Tim O’Brien manipulates his fictional writing. “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth” (179). “Story truth” is what the author calls the fictional stories he writes to suit the reader. To achieve the author’s goal, “story truth” is replaced by “happening-truth” because, according to O’Brien, “often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness” (71). The logic behind the American novelist’s belief is interesting due to how, in order to make one believe in the incredible craziness, it is necessary to change the crazy facts into

The Things They Carried, published in 1990, is an American Novel written by Tim O’Brien. The story holds true to the Vietnam War. The different stories within the novel are never assumed to be equal, not because some are better than others, but because they hold disparate goals. These goals include everything from imparting life lessons to educating readers about their nation’s history. The Things They Carried is especially distinctive; it is overall a straightforward tragedy, with the main flaw of an otherwise likeable main character causing his downfall.

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, author and Vietnam War veteran, combines his own experience with war and embellishments of those experiences to create a depiction that accurately conveys the reality of war. The background of the character Tim O’Brien resembles that of O’Brien himself. Both are young men out of college who live in small towns and are drafted into the Vietnam War. However, the story of Tim O’Brien the character does not directly follow O’Brien’s life. O’Brien did not run away to Canada and meet a mysterious yet hospitable man who makes him realize that he is not brave enough to follow through by following his own personal conscience. But the story of Tim O’Brien the character incorporates metaphors and significant details that more precisely portray the inner turmoil and fear

In “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien, the main protagonist of the tale takes the reader on a captivating and riveting journey. A journey that is filled with guts, gore, and love. O’Brien demonstrates how war can be complex and a paradox in itself. Through O’Brien’s eyes the reader captivates what it is like to be present in a battlefield, and endure the hardships of war. The point of the story is gradually unveiled before the reader’s eyes, as O’Brien guides his audience through a forest of mysticism and doubt.

In Tim O’Brien’s novel the narrator responds to his daughter’s question with the paradoxical answer, “I can answer ‘Yes.’ truthfully or ‘Of course not.’ honestly.” This may seem contradictory until reading the entire war novel “The Things They Carried.” O’Brien explores the question ‘What is truth?’ through philosophizing and foreshadowing. The reader sees that the truth is not always clear from the beginning when the author introduces two truths - story truth and happening truth.

In the novel The Things They Carried, the author, Tim O’Brien, shares a collection of war stories from the Vietnam war closely connected with the psychological, physical, and emotional weight the soldiers have bared. In the chapter How To Tell A True War Story, Tim O’Brien shows the central message to a reader that the truth might not completely be what occurred, but what the person who is experiencing it felt like happend.

How to Tell a True War Story – The Irony of Truth in Tim O'Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story"

Have you ever wonder if a fiction can be a true story? The novel The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien will make you reconsider the facts behind a fiction story as it brings several levels of truth to the readers. The novel is the collection of twenty-two stories about Vietnam War, which can be put separately as individual story, but can also be well tie together. O’Brien’s writing style is so vivid that the readers usually find themselves believe the events and details of his novel as true facts, even though the work is dedicate as fiction. And that is how he has redefining what is the “truth” to the readers.

It is not only war stories that create confusion, both for their writers, and their readers, about the nature of the truth they tell. Is the truth in a “true” story what the writer experienced, or the truth of what “really” happened? If the story is about other people, is the truth what the writer sees them do, or what they think they are doing? If the writer does not know the whole truth, does the story become false?