Embellishing to Get the Point Across

[Arielle]

I was speaking to my uncle who was overseas three times about this novel. We were talking about when he was in Iraq, a journalist came to speak to his troop about a recent battle. The first time they told the story, and a few months later they told a version of the story and yet again, a few months later they told the same story. A few weeks after the last encounter with the troops, the man called my uncle up and accused him and his soldiers of being liars, because the stories changed. I asked my uncle why the stories would have changed and he explained to me that unless I was fighting in the battle, I would never understand. And, to help get the point across of the fear, the story gets embellished to emphasize a point, because at the first interview the feelings are so raw and recent that these emotions are clearly expressed. As it gets further away from the battle, the feelings are still there, but it is harder to express. Thus, the men exagerate their stories to get their points across. I think this has a lot to do with why O'Brien may not have called this a true story, but a novel, because the truth would have been embellished anyway, yet it still gets his point and emotions out.

[Ada]

I agree with you, Arielle. I believe that the stories are "true" in the emotions they convey, as you said. However, specific facts or details may not be, which makes it not considered a true story. But I think the importance in many of the stories O'Brien tells is not in the details but in the feelings he tries to express. In one part of the book, Sanders is recounting a story about soldiers on a listening-post operation who hear strange sounds at night. He later confesses that he made some things up, like sounds of a "glee club" and "opera." He then says, "yeah, but listen, it's still true." In that scene, I think Sanders sort of represents O'Brien as he is writing his novel. Although specific details may be embellished or exaggerated, the true essence of the story cannot be changed.

[Park.chunsoo]

Do I see a reference to our subquestion? If these men have to exaggerate and embellish to get their point across, then the truth is distorted by storytelling. Of course, the emotions being expressed are the same, but the story doesn't accurately reflect what really happened.

I haven't been in war so I can't understand what urges these men to change the story. But to them, who have been in war together, the fact that the story varies from one telling to another is trivial. This is a tricky issue because no one can really criticize them. If anyone, it should be the soldiers themselves, but they find nothing wrong with "embellishment."

[Alon]

I think Chunsoo hit the nail on the head there. The stories don't reflect the truth at all--in fact, there's a whole chapter devoted to teaching how to tell a true war story which is composed of false war stories. The point is not to present the men who died, the amount of grenades used, not even the battles that took place. All of that is meshed up into the swamp that is Vietnam, into the horrors and confusion of combat, into the emotional chaos that burdens men after they have killed for the first time. The Things They Carried isn't a story about the Vietnam War; it's a story about the fragility of humanity and human emotion.

[Shigeto]

I agree with Alon. O'Brien uses the Vietnam War as a trantition to tell the overall "moral" to the story. O'Brien uses that technique when he stretches the truth for the girl so that she would understand that its not a war story, but rather a true love story. It sounds ironic: to lie more to make it more true. However, this contradiction it like sacrificing a small in in return for a greater good. Perheps, this concept is also used in war also.

[Eitan]

That is a great connection to real life, Arielle! I think that shows how what matters in a "true" war story is not the details but the gut-feelings. As O'Brien states "A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe" (78). What matters is how effective the story is not if every detail is correct. This relates back to the unit question of how storytelling affects truth. When truth is talked about in relation to storytelling it is different from truth about history. The truth in storytelling is the accuracy of the emotions, how the story affects others and how truly it fulfills its objectives. In history and other subjects truth is simply the accurate account of what happened. It would not matter whether the story has the true emotional weight behind it but whether it had the factual weight.

[Rachel]

You guys all bring up great points. I think Ada made a great point when she said that the details are not what is important in a good war story. A good war story should be representative of war and the emotions it brings. Although this may not be entirely factual, a listener gets a feel for the tragedy of war and is able to put herself in the mind of a soldier. O'Brien uses this technique of creating fictitious war stories in order to exemplify the sorrow and fear of war. True, we can never be certain of a war story unless we experienced it ourselves, but with stories told by others we are able to understand the psychological and emotional effects of war.

[Arielle]

I think it is possible that we also can draw the conclusion that language sometimes fails to convey the truth. When soldiers embellish to get theirpoint across, we (as civilians and non-soldiers) will never understand what it feels like to have 2, 10 or 500 men pointing guns at us. Thus, it is impossible for words to describe such a feeling. I think that in circumstances where there's extreme emotion, words fail us. To answer one of the questions posed at the begining of the Truth unit (what is the connection between truth and language), I think that there may be no connection, because a lot of times language cannot convey the truth.

[Hillary]

As everyone else has said, as long as the story is successful in conveying emotions felt throughout the war, then it is a "true" story. I strongly agree with Eitan's point about the importance of "gut-feelings." Ultimately, the author has to choose the means by which to communicate those feelings. I know there are sometimes when feelings are so strong that they simply cannot be articulated. I think war triggers a lot of those types of emotions. Having said that, I agree with Arielle's point that language cannot always adequately express the truth. In a war story, the details are not important. Stretching the truth, with regard to language, is a way for O'Brien to help us as readers relate to the stories he tells.

[Rachel]

In response to Chunsoo's question a few weeks ago, I think each man has his own truth. To a man who is not phased by the war, there may be no need to embellish. For a man like O'Brien, who we know was hesitant to go to the war, the need to embellish in order to convey his emotions is evident. "To each his own." Not every man had the same experience, and therefore, not every story is going to be the same. Similarly, the story can change as time goes on and feelings change or consequences become more apparent. It's a scary thought: there is never a definitive truth. But I think we may have to accept that what is true to us is true to us, and take it from there.

[Grace]

One of my favorite lines in the book is that a "war story is true if it makes the stomach believe" (In How To Tell a True War Story). I had a serious problem with O'Brien's approach at differentiating what is true from what is not at first. As I read on though, particularly as I cringed my way through the story of the baby buffalo, I've come to agree that embellishing on a story is sometimes the only way to make the listener feel the gut-wrenching pain that the storyteller is trying to portray. For instance, if in the story, it merely said "Rat Kiley's best friend, Curt Lemon, died right in front of him," we would have all felt some sympathy for Rat. But by seeing the direct--and disgusting-- cause and effect his friend's death had on Rat, by having to struggle through that horrific passage of the baby buffalo's slow death, we, too, were able to feel the utter repulsion that O'Brien wants us to hold about war. Maybe the buffalo story was seriously exaggerated. Maybe it didn't even happen to begin with. Either way, it made my "stomach believe it."

[Gabe]

I agree with Grace and others who have said that a story is true if you can get the emotion you're trying to get across, to the readers of listeners of the story. It is almost impossible to convey to a reader or listener the full effect of what happened, and embellishment is simply a literary device used to better show the reader what happened.

[Ada]

In response to Grace's post, I also agree that O'Brien wants us to see the effects of Lemon's death on Rat. In fact, I think that most of these stories do not really focus on what they tell, or the people they tell of. Rather, they emphasize the effects of the stories or experiences on the people who tell them. Therefore, I don't think it is wrong to "embellish to get the point across." The embellishments show that each person has their own take on an experience, and the importance is what the experience has done to change the person affected by it, not what actually happened. In essence, this is the difference between story truth and happening truth.