Sunday, September 18, 2016
TTTC - True or Not?!
O’Brien as a writer plays constant mind games with his reader. He is the author of these “fictional” stories yet he has a character named after himself. He as the author has experienced many of these stories in different variations than the ones told. Before the short story “How to Tell a True War Story,” where O’Brien completely messes with the minds of his readers, one may be led to believe that his stories completely fiction because of the great intensity and severity of some of his accounts. However, in the short story “Spin,” O’Brien talks about how stories fill in when memories are erased and that stories connect the past to the future. The way O’Brien describes his memories in conjunction with stories makes it seem like he is sharing his own personal, real-life encounters. However, as the reader, it is our job to remember that this book is not a memoir but rather a work of fiction. This tactic of making his reader guess whether each story actually occurred that O’Brien uses in his book is powerful. While it frustrates me and confuses me all at once, O’Brien’s mind games keep me on my toes and questioning each and every story he tells. In my opinion, this is one of O’Brien’s most useful tools as a writer, which has captured my attention and has forced me to keep reading.
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I agree with Rachel that O'Brien does a great job of confusing the reader with his mind games, leaving it up to the reader to decide what they think to be true and not. I think part of what O'Brien is doing is leaving us to feel the way many soldiers and veterans have after war, combat, and trauma. This soldiers, traumatized by the horrors of war, are not only changed for ever but they are also left for the most part in the dark. For many of soldiers there is a struggle to understand what is real, what is truth, and what is fake, simply a story, or hallucination. We, as readers, experience a little bit of this confusion and uncertainty in reading O'Brien's work especially as he calls into question his own writing and story telling through the chapter "How to Tell a True War Story". O'Brien has given us just another taste of what these soldiers felt in the field and at home and the burden of not knowing--not knowing what is true or what is real. It also maybe looked at as O'Brien having the characters unaware/unsure of what is actually true and through the stories they and O'Brien, the narrator, assumes some to be truth, others to be embellished, and others called into question but overall not knowing what is truth? Not knowing what is true especially in the war when a lot of their information is carried through word of mouth.
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