Blog 3

Story telling is a power humans have to pass on things they experience and feel, and in the end create and pass on history. Most of the stories are true, sometimes they are all false, and sometimes it's a mix of truth and lies to create a feeling for the audience that the storyteller felt while experiencing the story. In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien expresses the stories and horrors he faced from the Vietnam war and the effect is had on the many people he served with.
Each soldier has his own way of coping war. They have their own good luck charms that guide them through the battle and the nights and days of of horror they experience. Soldiers carry things that will take their mind of battle and death just to help them get through the day. A lot of what the soldiers in Vietnam carried was the basics, their food, ammunition, weapons, tools, and many other things. But the things they carried of value was what truly mean the most to them, For instance, "Kiowa, a devout baptist, carried a illustrated New Testament"(3), which Kiowa would refer to on a daily basis for religious and moral strength to take his mind away from Nam. Some carried diaries, some carried books, other carried drugs, such as painkillers, and other carried remembrance of their loved ones. It was all about getting through the war, doing your duty as a soldier, and living on to tell the storied of your life and others.
Among these Stories that we told in the book, O'Brien often stated that some of it didn't happen and then would retell the story with similar details, but some changed. O'Brien refers to this as trying to make the audience feel what he had seen. There are somethings you can't describe with real truth, so you tend to embellish the story to make it feel like it really happened when in the real truth it never did. O'Brien argues, "The memory traffic feeds into a rotary up on your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then pretty soon imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots down a thousand different streets"(33). Then all a writer can do is pick one of those streets and wander down it as they try to tell the story with that mix of memory and imagination. All the memories and stories that are trying to be told merge into one another, details and ideas get mixed up, therefore stories are embellished with fake details and events, but it adds the overall effect of the story. That is why the book is introduced as a "work of fiction by Tim O'Brien". There is plenty of truth within the stories, but on top of that there is lots of fiction that is merged in with the truth.
A great example of telling a story that is not true is his story about fleeing to the Canadian border. This whole chapter, or the whole story is designated to express a feeling rather than to tell a story of truth. O'Brien was afraid to go to the war, and this chapter shows how a story can show ones feelings about something, even though the events never happened. He talks about fleeing to the Tip Top Lodge where he meets and old man that he stays with for about a week. He admits later on in the book that it never happened, that working with the old man, and going out on the boat past the Canadian border with the old man didn't happen. But through this story, it tells how scared O'Brien was, and that fleeing to the border and experiencing all that he said he did, really was to contribute to an emotion he felt about the war.
The truth in war stories and all storytelling is the biggest idea in this book and O'Brien tell many stories himself, on top of other stories given by those he served with. It's not just O'Brien who know stories are not always true, but everyone else who tried to tell a war story. Like said before, there is a lot that is true in the events that happened in the story, and then their is things to represent those truth of feelings, but the actual events don't happen. O'Brien explains, "In any war story, but especially a true one, 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"(67-68). Some things are too horrific to tell because some just don't want to remember what happened, but they remember what they felt and to express what they felt they exaggerate what truly happens, but the feeling is still expressed.
In the war there are lots of young kids that are fighting and enduring things they never imagined to endure. They have in some sense lost a lot of innocence relating to death and horror. This idea of young people in the war losing innocence and dying is related to how O'Brien ends the book. He uses the story of his nine year old love, Linda, to show that the book wasn't just about telling Nam stories, but stories about others lives and the horrors of death and those who have to live with it all. At the end O'Brien states, "I realize it as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story"(233). O'Brien is referring to his loss of innocence as a child due to the death of his childhood lover and through stories he tried to bring her back and embrace the life she lived. O'Brien uses his stories to remember what had happened and to remember those that are alive and that stories should be used to celebrate the dead and remember their time a live as well.