Storytelling And Magic In The Magic Show By Tim O’Brien
In Tim O’Brien’s, The Magic Show, O’Brien conveys this story using mystical examples, emotional representation, and personal experiences. O’Brien explains to the reader that writing fiction is like conducting magic. The mystery that he uses in the story keeps the reader hooked. While not only using mystery, the emotion that is used makes the audience have an easy visualization of the story. He uses personal experiences to help readers relate to the story. He wants the audience to be fully aware of what is going on in the story at all times. O’Brien explains this story in an easy way so the readers and audience can comprehend and relate to the story the best way possible. As a child, O’Brien was a dreamer and he liked the power of making miracles happen. Magic and storytelling should always aim to extend the boundaries of the mysterious and help the mind come to a better understanding.
While in The Magic Show, O’Brien makes it a point to use mystery to keep the readers on the edge of their seats. He says this mysterious line, “if light could be cast into darkness of another’s heart, we would find there the “real” human being. ” In the story, O’Brien states that “the magician and the storyteller are embodied in a single person. ” He is relaying how similar a magician and a storyteller are. The way O’Brien uses suspense in his writing makes the audience addicted to the story. He describes how everything in the world is mysterious in different ways. For an example, he says that an ordinary item like a penny could have people tricked into thinking it was a mouse. He says, “You aim for tension and suspense, a sense of drama, displaying in concrete terms the actions and reactions of human beings contesting problems of the heart. ”
As well as mystery, O’brien uses a significant amount of emotion in his writings. He states that he wants the characters to have “aliveness. ” He says in the story, “Fictional characters are not constructed of flesh and bone, but rather of words, and those words serve as explicit incantations that invite us into and guide us through the universe of the imagination. ” O’Brien plunges back and forth into reality and imagination to keep the reader wondering what is going to come next. “To reach into one’s heart, down into that place where the stories are, bringing up the mysteries of oneself. ” This means that stories like The Magic Show help others come to know and help understand themselves. The way O’Brien uses emotion in The Magic Show makes it easy to visualize what is going on in the story. He talks about trickery and how mysterious it is once you trick someone else’s mind. One simple magic trick to one person, could be a complex series of events to another.
Lastly, O’Brien relates The Magic Show to the audience with multiple personal experiences of his childhood and life. He relates his childhood hobby of magic to his writing in many different ways. O’Brien alludes to Huckleberry Finn. He tries to convince the readers that Huckleberry Finn is real. In reality, Finn does not exist. O’Brien explains that Huck Finn is not real by ordinary standards, but is real by extraordinary standards. He tells the audience many times how fiction writing is just a sequence of illusions tricking the reader. In the first paragraph, O’Brien states that he enjoyed the power of magic and liked making miracles happen as a child. Furthermore, he says that he “liked the aloneness, as God and other miracle makers must like it. ”
In conclusion, The Magic Show is a unique and intriguing story. The author attracts and pulls the reader in by revealing the similarities between writing fiction stories and performing magic. With O’Brien using mystical examples, emotional representation, and personal experiences through his childhood, it shows that he wants the audience to be engaged and interested while reading The Magic Show. O’Brien states, “We might admire the cleverness of the writer. But we forget the story. Because there is no miracle to remember. ” The object of storytelling and the object of magic, is to create and perform miracles of the imagination.
