Theme Truth

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Within the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien the theme truth is portrayed many times. This novel gave a first hand look into the experiences that a war veteran as well as a active member had gone through on a daily basis. He used the truth in many cases to share the stories of himself, his friends, and others involved. O’Brien used the theme truth in his novel as an effective way to show the reader how he felt. Because he wanted the reader to feel everything he had, he used story-truth rather than the real truth to make it seem more explicit. By using this theme, O’Brien was able to explain what happened in war without making the novel a fiction, even though he made up somethings. With truth he was able to get across the feelings …show more content…
More in depth in the noel meaning however, was to give O’Brien a way to cope with what he had done and saw in vietnam without being judged or afraid of telling the whole truth. O’Brien showed the reader that storytelling is a coping mechanism for soldiers as well as a way to release their war experiences them from their thoughts. In his own way he used the book as a way to help him, “But this too is true: stories can save us. I’m a forty-three year old, and a writer now, and even still, right here.” (p.223). This quote shows how his writing put him where he is today because by sharing his experiences he was able to get through very traumatic events. In both instances story-truth and happening-truth, O’Brien included a way to tell the truth to his daughter about killing anyone, “‘Daddy tell the truth,’ Kathleen can say, ‘did you ever kill anybody?’ And i can say honestly, ‘Of course not.’ Or I can say, honestly, ‘Yes.’”(p.180) This is the most relevant quote from the novel that shows how story-truth and happening-truth can overlap and seem the same, but have a different long term effect. If he were to have told his daughter that he did kill someone, at that time, she could have had the idea that is was good or that her father was a bad man. And by using the story-truth he could have easily said no he hadn’t in means to protect her innocence and her idea of her father. The
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