Things_They_Carried

Essence of Meta-fiction Storytelling is acknowledged as an effective tool Iin literature storytelling is acknowledged as an effective tool for displaying an author’s viewpoint. Portraying the past, through storytelling, demonstrates the ability of the human mind to exemplify an event previously experienced; and recount it with such personal details so that the reader may relate accordingly. Having such an impact, the readers are able to project their own life experiences into the stories foretold, although this endeavor is fatally flawed.It is the act of recollecting remembered occurrences that turn into distorted fact obtained from human cognition. When a person attempts to recall certain memories,The factors of time play an important role in distorting the accuracy of details of each recalled event.subtle details tend to become blurred resulting in a distortion of accuracy. So as to compensate, a storyteller can replace these distortions with imaginary details needed to reach a mediumAs the brain tries to preserve the memories experienced, it intuitively distorts questionable details into a more familiar subject., whichEssentially, this can can revive a person’s awareness of the eventoccurrence, therefore allowing them to portray a truthful recollection. In the novel, Things They Carried, thestorytelling’s effects of storytelling are frequently displayed, accordingly, as soldiers become demoralized from the war as the author gives fake names to himself and the characters that he actually fought with in Vietnam. O’Brien wants to distort the distinction between fiction and fact. Each occurrence holds true to the idea that although certain characters and actionsactions are essentially made up have never occurred between the characters, the general feeling of a soldier’s perspective towards the war is understood. Tim O’Brien The act of storytelling in the novel is used to create a bond between the characters and the audience, so that the story shared will seemattempts to convey the story in a less historical fashion, thus less as objective and more relatableevant. This can effectively create a bond between the characters and the audience. Soldiers portray plausible events that occurred in the war allowing both parties to nd yet, clearly arrivedrive at the same generalization: that technical information surrounding theany characters is less effective in revealing truth, than the subjective truth of displaying true personal experience. A writer haspossesses the abilityability to separate himself from his real self-being to a fictional protagonist that can vibrantly portray a story’s conflictsto create imaginary characters and manipulate them to depict his/or her true conscious.. O’Brien reinvents his own identity and people significant to him into animated characters, who serve as soldiers fighting in Vietnam O’Brien wants to distort the distinction between fiction and fact. Both real and fictional personas of the author,O’Brien’s were grunts in the Vietnam War, however the fictional O’Brien hasd an imaginary 9-year-old daughter named Cathleen. When he takes her to the mud pits honoring his fellow soldier’s death, the only thing that Cathleen seems to notice is the “bizarreness” and “smell” of the foreign land. The interaction between Cathleen and Tim O’Brien unveils a sense of space between the story’s provider and recipient. Cathleen represents a recipient, who is essentially a reader who can communicate with the author and vise versa, but she cannot understand the situation completely. The empty space between the author and reader conveys the distinction between fact and fiction, thus showing that the author can portray a previously experienced event vibrantly through fictional detail that is at least relevant for the reader. The presentation of two personas in a story can preserve a writer’s initial innocence and disguise it with imaginary aspects. He implies that he is “forty-three years old and I’m still writing war stories” (36). O’Brien’s protagonist states this repetitively accordingly throughout the novel to that he is the author. This is to remind the reader that Tim O’Brieien’s memory of the war has an everlasting effect on his perspectiven. It also confirms that he did participated in the actual war andbut refers to his recollections as mere “stories” which now is a part of his past. He creates his own self- protagonistself imaginary character to tell the story in a way where "you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths" (158). By objectifying oneself,clarify that once “you separate it from yourself,” emotions events experienced visually and emotionally can be put in perspective so that “you objectify your own experience” and resort ited into a comfortable manner to “pin down certain truths”(158). O’Brienby separating certain regrets and positive emotions to convey a more clear perspectivereplaces his war traumas encountered visually with vivid details of his emotional reaction. The author portrays storytelling his view of war by using familiar aspects of taste, touch, smell, and sight to help the reader physically familiarize with the situation; thus making certain themes like truth more acceptable to the audienceunderstanding the truth of wars’ reasons for the dead. O’Brien’s purpose ofin creating a fictional characterstorytelling is to communicate with the reader sentimentally, and to to contradict the relevance of technical information byand embracinge the morals eof his experienced in Vietnam. In media news,News reporters can display death from war can be displayed as a common statistic, while storytelling can portray it as a life changing phenomenag experience. O’Brien introducesexplains the scenario ofwhen his imaginary protagonist killsing his first enemy enemy soldier in Vietnam. As the protagonisthe staress down at the corpse dead body, he starts to imagine the victim’s life before the war and portrays sees him as a boy who “wanted to be a teacher […] and hoped the Americans would go away”(119). This enemy perspective through the protagonist was to bring the portrayed dead back to life, He indicates a sense of shame, as he avnd views him alternatively as an innocentt human being, instead ofrather than a threatening enemy. . O’Brien clarifies society’s guilt over war’swanted to display the bloodshed by comparing it with the profound memories of the corpse. potential common attributes of boyhood that his Vietnamese soldier shared with an American soldier which was ultimately himself, the author. He used his characters to display common emotions experienced in war such as “shame” and “courage” to convey an understandable truth of the war’s corruption. The same emotions were felt as the protagonist describes the search of Kiowa’s dead body in the mud pits. As the platoon searches for the body, a fellow soldier named Sanders yells “Move it, Kiowa’s waiting on us (160),” which gives the reader the sense that Kiowa is still alive but only through his fellow soldiers’ anticipations. O’Brien uses his fictional characters to help the reader actively expect what will happen next. As they find the body within the muck, Sanders remarks, “That’s all it was, a mistake, but it had killed Kiowa” (161). Sanders portrays wars’ flaws and questionable tragedies by referblamings to the “mistake” onas a faulty command that led their platoonm toto the wrong location, thus criticizing the war’s flaws and questionable tragedies. The fact that Sanders calledthat Kiowa’s death was “a mistake” demonstratesproves to the reader how misconceptions ofthat the war is frequent in a society influenced by propaganda cannot always be judged through statistics and that every death has it’s own story to tell. Since the character’s criticism derives directly from his own experience, the readers and author can arrive at the same generalization about war’s corruption However, each death cannot be portrayed unless a character, in this case a soldier, tells the events through his own perspective that led to each trauma. O’Brien uses his imaginary group of protagonists as a collective entity, to strongly show that although the soldiers are essentially made-up, it allows the reader to sympathize with every character through emotion in the book and disregard the war’s statistics and propaganda. Ultimately, Tim O’Brien did not write about the Vietnam War. Instead he attempted to find a style of writing where time is not a profound factor, because of its tendency to deteriorate the accuracy for each event being recalled. The author wanted to preserve the emotions and deaths experienced by immortalizing it through fantasyiction. Storytelling glorifies the morals learned in life by animating created characters to actively learn life’s lessons with the reader in reality, which also correlates to the primary functions of human cognitionmemory. Although storytelling is notable tool in reproducing lost memories, human practices such as criminal jurisdictions show the flaws of human cognition because of its lack in accuracy and consistency. Storytelling can thrive among writers that use it to recount experiences with meaningful morals like truth, but it still shows weaknesses in displaying crucial specific details to help investigators accurately distinguish between truths and lies in other activities that require human recollection. O’Brien’s writing in the novel conveys the sense of survival, by keeping the significant important people in his life alive, in order to save himself with a story to share forin the world. Storytelling is essentially a meta-fiction of preserving and revealingg of history’s truth.