Summary Of Tim O 'Brien's The Things They Carried'

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In the chapter “Good Form” of The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, the author and the writer, establishes the claim that “story truth”-or the emotional truth, is a more effective way of narrating the unknowable war experiences than through “happening truth”- or the historical truth. And such claim is established through the eyes of the protagonist, Tim O’Brien, who by allegation is different from the actual author and writer himself, as he narrates his conflicts and the horrid occurrences throughout the Vietnam war. The fine line between the story truth and the historical truth blurs as the writer continually emphasizes the certainties and the uncertainties of his narratives, all while pushing the idea that this fictional story is, in fact, believable. All through the passages, O’Brien stages what could have …show more content…
Mainly for it presents the valid facts, which people can, no doubt, learn from, and help them make more reliable and informed decisions in the present than they had possibly done in the past. Unlike the overwhelming obscurity Tim O’Brien presents- to depict the war struggle and the occurrences- through emotional truth, the happening truth delivers the exact facts concerning the given event. And granting that the happening truth is more reliable, with neither fabrications nor embellishments, it ends up being just black and white, leaving the readers with no sense of emotion and restricted to only the given interpretations.That is to say, “I was once a soldier… And now twenty years later, I’m left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief” ( TTTC, 172). While these state the facts regarding the life of a soldier, the readers fail to comprehend what the protagonist felt; fail to experience the huge weight of responsibility and grief of killing someone. Whereas in the story truth, the audience are able to get a more meaningful interpretation of the event and truly undergo the raw emotions the characters went
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