Did that even happen?

Throughout this novel we read a story and are told later that what we read didn’t actually happen. Many people may question “why not tell us what actually happened?” I suppose when someone sits down to read a story about someone’s experiences in war they expect to hear the truth; they expect to read about death and other gory details they wouldn’t expect to read in another type of book. They expect to read things that are outlandish and seemingly impossible because they know that real life as a soldier at war is different than real life as a civilian at home. In The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien challenges the reader to recognize and understand why many war stories are said to be untrue.

“In a 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. …The 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 later says, “Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.” The point is that in war events can take place in such a rapid movement that no one really knows what actually happened. They simply know that shots were fired, everyone dropped to the ground and in the end someone had lost an arm. The minds’ peripheral picks up on the things that “seem” to have happen though. Perhaps it seemed like 20 minutes of rapid gunfire they were unable to return and someone’s arm was blown off but in reality it was only 10 minutes of rapid gunfire and the paralysis of fear was only in their minds and someone’s arm really did get blown off. 

“Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.” Perhaps knowing the validity of the specific details of a war story isn’t necessary for understanding the emotion of the moment or the lesson being offered. In fact, it is possible that even if soldiers could tell all of the true factual details of the events they survived that we might not find them as heroic or worthy of telling. Tim O’Brien’s story of the summer he received his draft letter is a perfect example of that. On The Rainy River is a story that seems so real, so incredibly believable but we know O’Brien never went to that river. Instead he stayed home playing golf that summer as he struggled with the decision of whether or not to run. I suppose we’ll never know for sure, but maybe if Tim O’Brien told us how that summer really went he would not have been able to engage the level of emotion in the reader that the fictional story does such an incredible job of eliciting.

I chose Elton John’s song, Candle in the Wind, for this idea of real truths vs fictional truths and how they can work for or against an author as they try to help their readers feel what they felt at a particular moment in their life. The lyrics have nothing to do with whether or not something is real, although the memories these soldiers carry with them are in a sense “candles in the wind.” However, the song as a whole elicits a very strong level of emotion and this level of emotion is what I believe Tim O’Brien is trying to evoke in everyone that reads this culmination of stories.