Sunday, November 23, 2014

Tim O'Brien The Things They Carried 11/23/14

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he tells war stories and post war stories. Reading the first couple of chapters, this book seems to be like a random book about war. As I read farther into the book, O’Brien began to talk about “story truth” and “happening truth.” Story truth is telling a fiction story that could be true or hold meaning. For instance, O’Brien gave an example of the story about the four soldiers who were walking along a trail, a grenade then lands at their feet and one of the soldier’s jumps on it saving the rest. O’Brien says (through story truth) that the real story is; four soldiers are walking along a path when a grenade lands at their feet, one of the soldiers jumps on it and they all die anyways. O’Brien said that is the true story that never gets told. Happening truth is what is really happening or has happened. For example, I have read the book The Things They Carried. That is true and it happened. Through story truth, Tim O’Brien tells readers fictional stories to show how horrifying war really is and that you don’t get glorified while raising your hands to the heavens as you die.

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