Truth does not exist. Even if there are dozens of eyewitnesses to an event, their stories will always vary when they are retold. They may not mean to change their story, or maybe they do, either way no one but they will ever know. Truth is nothing but a subjective idea. Tim O’Brien tells us his definition of truth in The Things They Carried, a novel he wrote which was inspired by his experiences in the Vietnam War. O’Brien’s definition of truth is broken up into two categories, story-truth and happening-truth. Story-truth by O’Brien’s definition, what it feels like happened, is very similar to my definition of truth. O’Brien says, “there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the
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In the chapter entitled, “The Man I Killed” O’Brien tells a story about a young man that he killed and says, “He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a starshaped hole.” (O’Brien 90.) In a later chapter entitled, “Good Form” O’Brien confesses that he made up that story and says, “Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I'm left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief.” (O’Brien 121.) O”Brien rather eludes discussing happening-truth at length, merely mentions it in passing. He says, “The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. When a guy dies, like Curt Lemon, you look away and then look back for a moment and then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot.” (O’Brien 52.) O’Brien says this is reference to the way that even if there are people that are eyewitnesses to an event, because of all the different factors involved, there can never be a definite account of what
In the chapter entitled, “The Man I Killed” O’Brien tells a story about a young man that he killed and says, “He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a starshaped hole.” (O’Brien 90.) In a later chapter entitled, “Good Form” O’Brien confesses that he made up that story and says, “Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I'm left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief.” (O’Brien 121.) O”Brien rather eludes discussing happening-truth at length, merely mentions it in passing. He says, “The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. When a guy dies, like Curt Lemon, you look away and then look back for a moment and then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot.” (O’Brien 52.) O’Brien says this is reference to the way that even if there are people that are eyewitnesses to an event, because of all the different factors involved, there can never be a definite account of what