Ling AP Lit. and Comp. 2010-11 discussion
What is Truth?
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Coping
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Hillary
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Nov 28, 2010 02:36PM
I think O'Brien creates the potentially untrue background of the character to add a new level of intimacy to the story. O'Brien definitely wants us readers to truly see how psychologically affected he is. Adding in speculations about the man he killed makes the story and the event much more personal. Even though his assumptions are far-fetched, he is still adding in a dramatic effect...probably to hold our interest. As a storyteller, can you really blame him for doing that? I do agree with you that adding a background is the farthest thing from a coping mechanism. In fact, O'Brien really is adding to the burden that he already has to bear. The same goes for the vivid description of the decaying corpse.
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Giving the dead Vietnamese soldier a background also fleshes out O'Brien's character. We know already that he is a writer, but his description of the dead man's life seems to be a natural response to his death. It emphasizes O'Brien's humanity--that he believes the man he killed was not just a faceless soldier but a real person--and it shows us that O'Brien (the character) is not just a writer but a storyteller.
Similar to what Anjali said, another coping mechanism used in this book is the burning of Than Khe after Ted Lavender is killed. Jimmy Cross decides to burn the whole ville, even though it is unnecessary and unjustified. Cross does this not only to quell his guilt about one of his men dying, but also to quell the guilt of being so distracted by thoughts of Martha that he allows himself not to pay attention to his platoon for a minute. The puppy being blown up, the water buffalo being tortured, and Than Khe being burned down are all violent reactions to emotional situations. These men see, hear and experience violence every day of their lives, and they feel as though acting violent is the only way to gain vengeance against a war they do not want to be involved in and a situation they cannot control.
This definitely isn't a way of coping. It is just the effect it has on O'Brien after he has taken away someone's life. When killing the man, O'Brien is almost acting instinctively. He had "no thoughts about killing." He threw "the grenade before" he even told himself "to throw it" (133). When he's killing, he was actuing on his survival instincts. He couldn't think about morals. However, only after seeing the young man's body, does O'Brien realizes that he has taken away someone's life and due to grief, he makes up stories about the man's life.
I agree, I don't think that making up facts about the dead man's life is a way of coping but it is a way of showing humanity. After killing someone O'Brien ponders all the ways he could have ruined the man's life. Instead of distancing himself from the dead man and just moving on, he gives the man a character and identity. It shows that O'Brien genuinely cares about human life. He is not capable of letting the event go. He cannot pretend that this mans life did not matter and that shows a different side of O'Brien, a humane one.
I agree with Ling and Catie. O'Brien did not make up the stories as a way to cope. It just showed how shaken and affected he was by the whole situation. For example, as he is making up these stories, he ignores Kiowa's attempts to relieve him of the pain and guilt from killing the Vietnamese man. He seems almost in a daze as he just sits and makes up these stories.
I agree with Ling, I don't think this is a coping mechanism. Au contraire, I think this is a destructive mindset. When you do something bad, and feel remorse, the guilt builds up until it becomes unbearable. I think this is what O'Brien was doing. He felt so awful about killing the Vietnamese man that he creates this whole story, to make the guilt worse. I don't know the exact value of making the guilt worse, but I am guilty (hah) of this, too. When I get upset about something, I feel worse and worse until I can't eat or sleep. It's not for fun, and it's definitely not a coping method, but I think it keeps me humane and down to earth. In the case of O'Brien, it reminds him that he is still human and he still feels human emotions, even though he's fighting a war.
The line between storytelling and truth, and between coping and sadism is also distorted in "Notes," the chapter immediately after "Speaking of Courage." O'Brien reveals to the reader that although Bowker was the muse for part of his writing, and although Bowker's name is used in the chpater, the person who truly did give up and let go of Kiowa was not Bowker, but O'Brien. This chapter is purely a coping mechanism, as O'Brien says himself that, "By telling stories, you objectify your own experiences. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others."
I think, despite his making up the character of the story, he makes the story more "true". As O'Brien says in the short story "How to Tell a True War Story", war story may sometimes be made up so that there is more truth in what War really is. I think this is why O'Brien makes up this potential strech.
I agree with Shigeto. By making up the story of the boy's life O'brien is giving a full story and not just bits and pieces of his own memory. Instead of analyzing his action as just an act of war committed against an enemy, O'brien is recognizing that he has put short a story that shouldn't have had war in it at all. The boy was not too far off from O'brien in that he was avoiding shame, "Beyond anything else, he was afraid of disgracing himself". The story of the boy is to show that there is more to war then fighting and a dead corpse, there is a story behind the limp body, and O'brien can't ignore that.
Soldiers feel guilt even when it's not their fault. In the case of his "killing" the young soldier, he "did not kill him. But [he] was present... and [his] presence was guilt enough" (179). In the story-truth, his guilt of killing the man is true, although his actual act is not. In the happening-truth, his actual act is true, although the readers then loses his emotions. This is why O'Brien writes that "story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth" (179) and this is where we see sometimes language fail the truth.
While I was reading through these posts, I had the same quote in mind as Alon most recently posted. Having said that, I don't think he wrote this story, or any of the stories, for the purpose of coping. In fact, he says that himself: "I did not look at my work as therapy, and still don't." Still, I believe they are what helped get him through the transition process that so many people, like Bowker, have such a hard time dealing with. Instead, by creating a background story for the man he killed--but didn't actually kill, apparently--he evokes a deeper feeling in the reader, and allows the reader to share in and understand his grief.
I don't think that O'brien is makes up the back-story for the man he killed as a coping mechanism. I believe he creates a story to humanize the man he killed. O'brien is so grief-stricken from having taken a man's life that he has to humanize the man he killed. It's not a therapy, but rather a compulsive need of his, which only further griefs him.
I actually think that although the scenarios O'Brien makes up for the man he killed can make him feel worse, they can be looked upon as a coping mechanism. As he makes up the stories, sometimes he kind of goes off on a tangent and instead of focusing on what he has done or how he feels, he focuses on creating this fake background for the Vietnamese man. In a way, this is a coping mechanism. If he focuses solely on creating this story, he does not have to deal with the emotional consequences of what he has done, at least not immediately. It may make him feel worse later but for the moment, he focuses on making up creative stories, not feeling sad.
I agree with Ada. It seems as if O'Brien makes a background story to make himself feel better. As he progressively makes the story bigger, O'Brien begins to feel more human rather than a machine massacreing its own race without any emotions. By making a fake background, he sees the cruelty of killing and understands, despite the mission of war, that killing makes one lose humanity.
After reading what Ada wrote I have agree that O'brien tells the story to himself as a way of avoiding the reality. Kiowa tries to give him reassurances about the wrongness of his act by saying things such as, "No sweat man, what else could you do?" Kiowa encourages Obrien to talk about his act, but O'brien can't do it because he knows the reality of this humanless, emotionaless act that killed a man. Instead O'brien brings the man to life with a story so for the time he doesn't have to think of his guilt, but as Ada said, creating the story.
