Here lies the truth behind storytelling.

Here goes another one for the blog. Let’s get it started. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien gives his readers a different perspective on a typical history subject, the Vietnam War. It is unique from other texts because he blurs the margins between the customary right and wrong, such as the enemies of this war and reasons for it. Many believe that war is fought between two primary groups, the good guys and the bad guys. In World War II, it was especially easy to distinguish this contrast. It was a war fought between Allies, the good, and Axis, the bad. But this fine line vanished once war erupted in Southeast Asia. It was the first war to split the nation in half, patriots who were for it and hippies who were against it. There was riot, protest, and anger everywhere. It was a war where “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (O’Brien 40). In the end, Vietnam War veterans were leaving the chaos seen in the jungles and coming home to an unsupportive nation. They were harassed by fellow citizens and called names such as baby killers. It was hard times for these brave men and their only way to get through such troubling times was to let everything out by retelling the stories as they lived them.

Within The Things They Carried, I believe each of the stories themselves reveal the central idea O’Brien is attempting to portray, which is the importance of storytelling. He fully embellishes this message in his narrative “How to Tell a True War Story”. There are many comments about storytelling that O’Brien delicately places throughout this excerpt. One in particular is about the truth behind stories. He states that “it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed” (O’Brien 71). What he trying to convey is the truths behind describing and retelling personal experiences and how they will never be exactly how it happened. There are too many occurrences going on that it is impossible for one person, for one pair of eyes to take in the entire experience all at once and to memorize the details of it. He goes on to say that “pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed” (O’Brien 71). When this happens, retelling a story becomes a battle between the real truth and the perceptive truth. What actually happens is only what the story teller believes to have happened. It is only coming from his one perspective alone.

He later states that “You’d feel cheated if [the story] never happened,” creating a moment of mistrust and dishonesty (O’Brien 83). But a few lines later, he reveals that “Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing many happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (O’Brien 83). In a way, this can be linked to the totalitarian society of 1984 by Orwell. People are persuaded to believe certain “facts” that are written and rewritten in the history books. After, they must force extract everything they believed to be true, which is now considered false, and throw it away and out of their mind. Their reality of truth is a manipulation by a higher power. That was a little off subject but hopefully you see the connection. In the end, it all comes down to the act of communication. By communicating through stories and language, we can allow other people to relate to our experiences and our reality. We want others to see what we see, to feel what we feel. By telling stories, we allow this connection to run from person to person and become an enormous network of emotion and sympathy. If there was an organization such as Newspeak from 1984, where their main goal is to destroy the written language and deconstruct our means of communication into simple terms, then there would be no way of retelling stories with such power and emotion. This is what connects people from every corner of the world. Communication is the key.

“The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.”
~ Ben Okri