The Things We Carry, Vol. 2

Yes, loyal readers, that's right, volume two.  Speaking of that, you can read the first one of this series here.  Anyway, this here is my second post in what has officially become a series, now, exploring each piece of The Things They Carried that takes on a different shape, different meaning.  Today's topic, and a very fun one: telling a story, and how impossible it is to really get it right.

Tim O'Brien has done more than just tell his friends and family his story--he's told everyone, and I mean everyone.  But he's done it in more ways than one.  Take a look at what he tells his daughter, Kathleen.  Toward the end of the book, O'Brien outright says that not all of the book is the truth for him, that he could tell his daughter both that he had and hadn't killed a man, and that both would be true.

Now, how can that be?

When someone experiences a great deal of pain, or really any emotion, at once, the lines of what's real blur.  It isn't just how it looked when Curt Lemon died, by grenade or by mine or however, nor is it how long it takes a medic to crawl across a shit field to help with a million-dollar-wound.  No, the lines blur everywhere, because the facts simply don't cover the true emotion held in the story.

Here's an example: my dad and uncle were both in the Navy.  My dad is perfectly okay, and my uncle died two years ago in a car crash.  I talk to my dad about each story in this book, and I think about them to myself.  That's the factual truth.  But the truth to me is much more than that.  And if I were to tell this story, the detail would be painfully greater, and perhaps there would be things that had never happened.  But they would illustrate a point, every word would.  The factual truth isn't important in stories of real emotional power.  The generalities are important, sure, but what actually happened is not.  The details paint the emotional definition, and for O'Brien, that means he really killed a man.  That means Norman Bowker had O'Brien tell a story of personal failure for him.  That means the sunlight really did pick Curt Lemon up.

And, above all, it means that everything that happened may never have happened at all, but that doesn't matter.  Whatever happened in the life of Tim O'Brien, it was permanently imprinted on his soul.  However he expresses that, as long as he doesn't hold back, is completely true.