Tim O'Brien's Gift for Storytelling in “The Things They Carried”
Storytelling has narrators telling stories filled with improvising or with different truths from the movement of sharing stories. 'The Things They Carried' by Tim O'Brien are stories about the lives of soldiers he encountered or shared stories from others during the Vietnam war. The purpose of storytelling has various reasons for Tim O'Brien and some of them are reviewd in this essay about “The Things They Carried”. Such reasons is assisting him recollecting the past, whether factually accurate or not, helps with imagery in the story to make the readers believe, and storytellers can shape their listeners' experiences and opinions.
To begin with, in 'The Things They Carried,' O'Brien writes stories about his past during the battle. He wrote war stories to help those who died live on, remember his time, and tell what he regrets. In the text, it states, 'Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story'. The author reveals that stories can help one recollect what had occurred in the past because even if you can't remember the events accurately, you can recall it if it became a story.
Furthermore, whether storytelling is accurate or not shouldn't matter because what matters most is whether the reader believes in it or understands what the author is trying to convey. Although the author tells stories about a part of the soldiers' lives that are a stretch of the truth or not at all true, it can give the readers a different perception of things. In the text, it states, 'The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness'(O'Brien). The author emphasizes that stories can bring people to imagine and believe in them because regardless of the truth, it also depends on the hidden value and meaning.
Storytellers can shape their listeners' experiences and opinions. The author writes, 'The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and ... to make a person feel something about what the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human'(O'Brien). O'Brien wants oneself to understand what they went through and wants his stories to capture the hearts of the readers. Although those who read the book may not have experienced it, he wants them to understand that war can be different than it seems on the outside, and to do that he needs to 'hit the human heart.'
In conclusion, the purpose of storytelling for Tim O'Brien is assisting him in recollecting the past, whether factually accurate or not, helps with imagery in the story to make the readers believe, and storytellers can shape their listeners' experiences and opinions. O'Brien writes stories for others to understand that there are many hidden purposes for storytelling. 'The Things They Carried' was to show a different perspective of how people view the war, but he also wanted the readers to understand what he felt during those times and the people he talked about, whether it was about regret or to remember his past. To do that he blurred happening truth and storytelling truth to make others understand what happened because if they never experienced it people most likely won't believe what happened.
