In "Good Form," O'Brien makes the distinction between happening-truth and story truth. Explain this distinction. Be sure to mention the examples he uses to illustrate this distinction.
25 comments:
Sara Olson
said...
Truth is what a person believes to be true. Tim O'Brien realizes that as readers we are not there and do not FEEL the impact it had. O'Brien then uses Story Truth to make you FEEL the truth and not read the truth.
The Happening Truth
He doesn't use a lot of Happening Truth in The Things They Carried (underlined). He says "Almost Everything else is invented" (O'Brien 179). This if you do not understand the difference between Happening Truth and Story Truth will make you feel jipped of the truth.
The Story Truth
O'Brien tells you outright what Story Truth is. He tells us that story truth is what, "[He] want[s] you to feel what [he] felt" (O'Brien 179)
LaTausha Cotner: Story-truth is truth stretched or toyed with. He explains the "[he] wants you to feel what [he] felt", this is story-truth, something to play with your emotion (179). He wants the reader to cry, laugh, smirk, something, he wants the reader to be connected. "His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye was a star shaped hole. I killed him", the gives the reader goosebumps or possibly makes him/her queezy, its not the happening-truth yet it makes the reader connect.
Happening-truth is the real deal, the boring stuff. Happening-truth is exact to the point no interesting suspenseful moments, just the black and white, this is what happened. "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", that is happening-truth, it is a fact with exact memories.
Kaitlyn Betz O'Briens' distiction between happening-truth and story-truth is displayed and explained in his quote, "story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth" (179). This is so because the happening-truth doesn't make the reader feel, or experience experiences the same way as a story-truth does. It's the same when reading a fiction and nonfiction book. Which one pulls you in, makes you listen, keeps you interested, and makes you actually feel emotion? The fiction book, or story, does. I don't think anyone can read a biography about someone important and cry over the facts of their death. However when they sit an read a story that pulls them in, they'll most likly cry their eyes out over the characters death. This is illustrated when O'Brien explains, "Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies..." (180) and, "Here is the story-truth. He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty..." (180). Obviously compared to the diction in the happening-truth, the diction used in the story-truth shows that the ending will be the tear jerker.
Story-truth is the truth that you feel, it is the truth you can picture, you can imagine every bit of it. Happening-truth is the truth that you just hear. It leaves no long-lasting images in your head, you do not feel what the story-teller experienced. It is "I was afraid to look", compared to "His jaw was in his throat"(180) Happening-truth means you are "left with FACELESS responsability and FACELESS grief". However when it comes to story truth you know what you did and who you did it to. You see each individuals face. You are left with the fact that "I killed him", you know who you killed and how. Story-truth can be so real, you can feel the guilt or any emotions that the speaker might have felt. Happening-truth you feel sorry for someone for going through something and feeling guilt for "being afrad to look".
Kaitlyn- I like that you used his example to explain the difference and that you connected it to your own fictional reading experience...now the real question remains..do you still feel like he's toying with you?
The distinction he makes between happening-truth and story truth is that story truth has the ability to "make things present"(204) while happening-truth serves as the complete truth, no embellishments or extremely depressing and graphic scenarios that exaggerate what really occurred. O'Brien explains that story truth can sometimes be truer than happening-truth. The happening-truth seems to leave him with "faceless responsibility and faceless grief" (203). With that being said, O'Brien prefers the story-truth because it allows him to release all his suppressed emotions. He explains that, "I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief adn love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again"(204). So while it isn't the truth of what occurred, it is however, the truth of the raw emotion he felt and continues to feel.
Tiffany Friedlund The truth is hard to imagine sometimes. If O'Brien only told us throughout the entire novel that he "was once a soldier" and was "afraid to look" at the "real bodies with real faces"(180), it wouldn't make for an interesting read, nor would it get the point across that the war was horrible. By adding more details in the "story-truth", it became more real in the eyes and minds of the readers. Saying that many men died doesn't really mean much to me. It doesn't make me feel much for the narrator or make the story feel real or even true. But, by giving a detailed description of the man who was killed and mentioning that "[he] killed him", it makes the story seem more real and truthful. It also helped me emphasize with the narrator more. So in reality, what seems more truthful, really isn't the truth and the simple truth feels unimportant. To Tim, both versions of the story is true. He says that he "can say, honestly, 'Of course not.' or 'Yes'"(180) and they would be be honest answers. Although in reality Tim was the one to kill the young man, he still felt guilty, making both versions the truth in his eyes.
Bethanie - LaTausha I agree completely with you. Story truth is what the author has manipulated from memory and imagination to warp the event into something that will get you to feel what they felt then. There are only two ways to make this happen, live it or believe the story truth.
While happening truth might not be boring, or lacking suspense, the emotions might be overlooked. When people read what actually happened they usually fail to pick up on the gut wretching feels that one must read between the lines in order to understand.
Elisabeth, In this chapter O'Brien describes two different kinds of truth and what each one means. In the happening-truth O'Brien just describes events about him and how he actually reacted and did in each event. "I watched a man die on a trail near the village of My Khe..I did not kill him"(O'Brien 179). In this happening truth he just remembers the mans face as not a pretty one and says that he was just present in this situation. In the story-truth O'Brien can look at certain things that he didn't look at in the happening truth. He can make himself into a different person that allows him to feel again. "His jaw was in his throat..his one eye shut, the other eye was a starshaped hole...I killed him."(O'Brien 180). With the story-truth O'Brien has feelings and emotions that he didn't have in the happening-truth, and that is why he tells a story-truth because he can "make himself feel again."
Ladies--- put your citations at the end of the sentence and NEVER within the sentence.
Tiffany - good point. It makes it more real that our narrator, Tim O'Brien is the one who killed the young Vietnamese soldier...after all...we know soldier Tim, dont' we?
Carole Surfus.... The happening-truth is, of course, the truth of what really happened and what Tim really felt. This truth, unfortunately, is ineffective unless you were there. The readers of this chapter have no idea what Tim felt when he was over there or the remorse and guilt he felt in certain situations. This is why Tim uses story truth. Story truth is when the author makes something up, or embellishes a story, to make the reader better understand. Because the reader doesn't understand the emotions that Tim felt, it is the author's job to add details to make this situation real in the reader's mind and to make them feel how Tim felt. These are fictional, but they hold truthful emotions. The examples he used were as follows: 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"(180). Story truth - "He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye was a starshaped hole. I killed him"(180). Which one affected you the most?
Mrs. Matysak, I don't think it should have been at the beginning of the book because it would have left alot of people questioning the validity of O'Briens tale. After having read so far into the book its easy to create your own little distinctions. If it was laid out black and white that there was some falsified information it wouldn't be able to captivate you in the way it has done so far.
Happening-truth is what actually happened, the events that made history, the real actions that took place. For O'Brien the happening truth is as follows, that "[He] was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but [he] was young then and afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, [he's] left with faceless responsibilty and faceless grief" (180).
Story truth is made up of the exaggerated events that may or may not have taken place, but ultimately make it possible for the reader to feel what is happening and experience it for themselves. O'Brien states that "what stories can do, is make things present" (180). So the events that happened years ago can be made relevant again, the suffering can be felt once more, the peril experienced by those who never could experience it.
Carole Surfus to Mrs. Matysak... If this chapter had been the first in the book, then the reader wouldn't have gotten as into it. The reader needs the emotional rollercoaster of the previous chapters to truly appreciate what O'Brien is trying to show us. It just.....the book wouldn't have been taken as seriously if that had been the chapter to start the novel.
I agree with Katie. If it had been at the beginning I just wouldn't have understood the feelings. As you read you think it's real and you FEEL, really feel what might have been the intensity of what these soldiers felt.
As a majority of others before me have said, story truth is the truth that the author wants the readers to know. The author uses story truth to let the reader get a better understanding of the story's events. Near the beginning of the book, during "How to Tell a True War Story" O'Brien had inserted the mutilation of the baby buffalo to illiustrate Kiley's grief toward his friend's death. The happening truth is what actually happened in reality. The problem with the happening truth is that it can be contaminated. Either by foreign factors ,such as rumors told after the event that the person remembering subconciously added in. Or by the passage of time. O'Brien states how he's "left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief"(203). He has also described the face of the soldier whose "eye was a star-shaped hole"(204). Is that the only face he saw? The happening truth says that the man did not die by O'Brien's hand. The story truth says he did. -Jennifer Dolezal
Carole Surfus.... I agree with the anonymous statement above. If you said "falsified information" then you would just take the information with a grain of salt. You wouldn't take the time to understand what O'Brien and the other soldiers experienced.
Tiffany I agree with Carole that it shouldn't have been the first chapter in the book. It would have changed everything. I also don't believe that O'Brien would call it "falsified information", more like an expanded truth. He really was telling us about a man that was killed on the trail, but just bended the truth a little and said that it was himself who had killed the man, not another soldier which helped the reader learn about the truths of the horrors of war.
Haley White to Carole Surfus and many other above blogs,
I had a really hard time appreciating O'Brien's different versions of his own "truth", but this blog seemed to clear it up quite a lot. Way to be guys!! :)
From Kaitlyn Betz to Tiffany Friedlund When reading your post I agreed with everything you mentioned, like how, "The truth is hard to imagine sometimes" and how, "If O'Brien only told us throughout the entire novel that he "was once a soldier" and was "afraid to look" at the "real bodies with real faces"(180), it wouldn't make for an interesting read, nor would it get the point across that the war was horrible." I think you made a good point and used good examples to explain it to your readers. O'Brians' story-truth has much more impact than his happening-truth.
25 comments:
Truth is what a person believes to be true. Tim O'Brien realizes that as readers we are not there and do not FEEL the impact it had. O'Brien then uses Story Truth to make you FEEL the truth and not read the truth.
The Happening Truth
He doesn't use a lot of Happening Truth in The Things They Carried (underlined). He says "Almost Everything else is invented" (O'Brien 179). This if you do not understand the difference between Happening Truth and Story Truth will make you feel jipped of the truth.
The Story Truth
O'Brien tells you outright what Story Truth is. He tells us that story truth is what, "[He] want[s] you to feel what [he] felt" (O'Brien 179)
LaTausha Cotner:
Story-truth is truth stretched or toyed with. He explains the "[he] wants you to feel what [he] felt", this is story-truth, something to play with your emotion (179). He wants the reader to cry, laugh, smirk, something, he wants the reader to be connected. "His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye was a star shaped hole. I killed him", the gives the reader goosebumps or possibly makes him/her queezy, its not the happening-truth yet it makes the reader connect.
Happening-truth is the real deal, the boring stuff. Happening-truth is exact to the point no interesting suspenseful moments, just the black and white, this is what happened. "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", that is happening-truth, it is a fact with exact memories.
Kaitlyn Betz
O'Briens' distiction between happening-truth and story-truth is displayed and explained in his quote, "story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth" (179). This is so because the happening-truth doesn't make the reader feel, or experience experiences the same way as a story-truth does. It's the same when reading a fiction and nonfiction book. Which one pulls you in, makes you listen, keeps you interested, and makes you actually feel emotion? The fiction book, or story, does. I don't think anyone can read a biography about someone important and cry over the facts of their death. However when they sit an read a story that pulls them in, they'll most likly cry their eyes out over the characters death. This is illustrated when O'Brien explains, "Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies..." (180) and, "Here is the story-truth. He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty..." (180). Obviously compared to the diction in the happening-truth, the diction used in the story-truth shows that the ending will be the tear jerker.
Shayna
Story-truth is the truth that you feel, it is the truth you can picture, you can imagine every bit of it.
Happening-truth is the truth that you just hear. It leaves no long-lasting images in your head, you do not feel what the story-teller experienced.
It is "I was afraid to look", compared to "His jaw was in his throat"(180) Happening-truth means you are "left with FACELESS responsability and FACELESS grief". However when it comes to story truth you know what you did and who you did it to. You see each individuals face. You are left with the fact that "I killed him", you know who you killed and how. Story-truth can be so real, you can feel the guilt or any emotions that the speaker might have felt. Happening-truth you feel sorry for someone for going through something and feeling guilt for "being afrad to look".
Tausha - don't let you quotes stand alone
Kaitlyn- I like that you used his example to explain the difference and that you connected it to your own fictional reading experience...now the real question remains..do you still feel like he's toying with you?
Cassondra Patrick
The distinction he makes between happening-truth and story truth is that story truth has the ability to "make things present"(204) while happening-truth serves as the complete truth, no embellishments or extremely depressing and graphic scenarios that exaggerate what really occurred. O'Brien explains that story truth can sometimes be truer than happening-truth. The happening-truth seems to leave him with "faceless responsibility and faceless grief" (203). With that being said, O'Brien prefers the story-truth because it allows him to release all his suppressed emotions. He explains that, "I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief adn love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again"(204). So while it isn't the truth of what occurred, it is however, the truth of the raw emotion he felt and continues to feel.
Tiffany Friedlund
The truth is hard to imagine sometimes. If O'Brien only told us throughout the entire novel that he "was once a soldier" and was "afraid to look" at the "real bodies with real faces"(180), it wouldn't make for an interesting read, nor would it get the point across that the war was horrible.
By adding more details in the "story-truth", it became more real in the eyes and minds of the readers. Saying that many men died doesn't really mean much to me. It doesn't make me feel much for the narrator or make the story feel real or even true. But, by giving a detailed description of the man who was killed and mentioning that "[he] killed him", it makes the story seem more real and truthful. It also helped me emphasize with the narrator more. So in reality, what seems more truthful, really isn't the truth and the simple truth feels unimportant.
To Tim, both versions of the story is true. He says that he "can say, honestly, 'Of course not.' or 'Yes'"(180) and they would be be honest answers. Although in reality Tim was the one to kill the young man, he still felt guilty, making both versions the truth in his eyes.
Bethanie - LaTausha
I agree completely with you. Story truth is what the author has manipulated from memory and imagination to warp the event into something that will get you to feel what they felt then. There are only two ways to make this happen, live it or believe the story truth.
While happening truth might not be boring, or lacking suspense, the emotions might be overlooked. When people read what actually happened they usually fail to pick up on the gut wretching feels that one must read between the lines in order to understand.
Cassondra Patrick
*and :)
Elisabeth,
In this chapter O'Brien describes two different kinds of truth and what each one means. In the happening-truth O'Brien just describes events about him and how he actually reacted and did in each event. "I watched a man die on a trail near the village of My Khe..I did not kill him"(O'Brien 179). In this happening truth he just remembers the mans face as not a pretty one and says that he was just present in this situation. In the story-truth O'Brien can look at certain things that he didn't look at in the happening truth. He can make himself into a different person that allows him to feel again. "His jaw was in his throat..his one eye shut, the other eye was a starshaped hole...I killed him."(O'Brien 180). With the story-truth O'Brien has feelings and emotions that he didn't have in the happening-truth, and that is why he tells a story-truth because he can "make himself feel again."
Ladies--- put your citations at the end of the sentence and NEVER within the sentence.
Tiffany - good point. It makes it more real that our narrator, Tim O'Brien is the one who killed the young Vietnamese soldier...after all...we know soldier Tim, dont' we?
Carole Surfus....
The happening-truth is, of course, the truth of what really happened and what Tim really felt. This truth, unfortunately, is ineffective unless you were there. The readers of this chapter have no idea what Tim felt when he was over there or the remorse and guilt he felt in certain situations. This is why Tim uses story truth.
Story truth is when the author makes something up, or embellishes a story, to make the reader better understand. Because the reader doesn't understand the emotions that Tim felt, it is the author's job to add details to make this situation real in the reader's mind and to make them feel how Tim felt. These are fictional, but they hold truthful emotions.
The examples he used were as follows: 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"(180).
Story truth - "He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye was a starshaped hole. I killed him"(180).
Which one affected you the most?
Should this chapter have been the first one in the book?
Mrs. Matysak,
I don't think it should have been at the beginning of the book because it would have left alot of people questioning the validity of O'Briens tale. After having read so far into the book its easy to create your own little distinctions. If it was laid out black and white that there was some falsified information it wouldn't be able to captivate you in the way it has done so far.
would O'Brien call it falsified information?
Katelyn Peters:
Happening-truth is what actually happened, the events that made history, the real actions that took place. For O'Brien the happening truth is as follows, that "[He] was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but [he] was young then and afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, [he's] left with faceless responsibilty and faceless grief" (180).
Story truth is made up of the exaggerated events that may or may not have taken place, but ultimately make it possible for the reader to feel what is happening and experience it for themselves. O'Brien states that "what stories can do, is make things present" (180). So the events that happened years ago can be made relevant again, the suffering can be felt once more, the peril experienced by those who never could experience it.
Carole Surfus to Mrs. Matysak...
If this chapter had been the first in the book, then the reader wouldn't have gotten as into it. The reader needs the emotional rollercoaster of the previous chapters to truly appreciate what O'Brien is trying to show us. It just.....the book wouldn't have been taken as seriously if that had been the chapter to start the novel.
To Mrs. Matysak & Katie Cooke
I agree with Katie. If it had been at the beginning I just wouldn't have understood the feelings. As you read you think it's real and you FEEL, really feel what might have been the intensity of what these soldiers felt.
"Falsified Information" sounds like everything Tim O'Brien said was made up.
As a majority of others before me have said, story truth is the truth that the author wants the readers to know. The author uses story truth to let the reader get a better understanding of the story's events. Near the beginning of the book, during "How to Tell a True War Story" O'Brien had inserted the mutilation of the baby buffalo to illiustrate Kiley's grief toward his friend's death.
The happening truth is what actually happened in reality. The problem with the happening truth is that it can be contaminated. Either by foreign factors ,such as rumors told after the event that the person remembering subconciously added in. Or by the passage of time.
O'Brien states how he's "left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief"(203). He has also described the face of the soldier whose "eye was a star-shaped hole"(204). Is that the only face he saw? The happening truth says that the man did not die by O'Brien's hand. The story truth says he did.
-Jennifer Dolezal
Carole Surfus....
I agree with the anonymous statement above. If you said "falsified information" then you would just take the information with a grain of salt. You wouldn't take the time to understand what O'Brien and the other soldiers experienced.
Tiffany
I agree with Carole that it shouldn't have been the first chapter in the book. It would have changed everything. I also don't believe that O'Brien would call it "falsified information", more like an expanded truth. He really was telling us about a man that was killed on the trail, but just bended the truth a little and said that it was himself who had killed the man, not another soldier which helped the reader learn about the truths of the horrors of war.
Haley White to Carole Surfus and many other above blogs,
I had a really hard time appreciating O'Brien's different versions of his own "truth", but this blog seemed to clear it up quite a lot. Way to be guys!! :)
From Kaitlyn Betz to Tiffany Friedlund
When reading your post I agreed with everything you mentioned, like how, "The truth is hard to imagine sometimes" and how, "If O'Brien only told us throughout the entire novel that he "was once a soldier" and was "afraid to look" at the "real bodies with real faces"(180), it wouldn't make for an interesting read, nor would it get the point across that the war was horrible." I think you made a good point and used good examples to explain it to your readers. O'Brians' story-truth has much more impact than his happening-truth.
Thank you so much for this blog! This helped me so much with homework assignment!!
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