1. Storytelling
Kaytlin Kuns
IB English 3 HL
Brennan
IOP

2. In Tim O’Brien’s fictional novel The
Things They Carried, how does
O’Brien use storytelling as a device to
impart truth? Additionally, why is
storytelling’s ability to preserve
memories so vital for the human
soul?

3. Background: Tim O’Brien
Born October 1, 1946 in Austin, Minnesota
Graduated from Macalester College in 1968 and was
drafted into the Vietnam war directly afterwards
He was strongly against the war, but reported for
service none the less
Returned from his tour in 1970 and became a
graduate student at Harvard
Left Harvard to be a newspaper reporter, and would
later on become a fiction writer

4. O’Brien is using his
stories as a device to
impart truth to his
readers.

5. “And in the end, of course, a true war
story is never about war. It’s about
sunlight. It’s about the special way
that dawn spreads out on a river
when you know you must cross the
river and march into the mountains
and do things you are afraid to do.
It’s about love and memory it’s about
sorrow. It’s about sisters who never
write back and people who never
listen” (81).

6. Subject is war; however, the story
O’Brien is telling is not.
He is using the story as a device to
explicate the real purpose of the
writing: the emotional truth.

7. Vivid imagery of the setting to place yourself in the
footsteps of the soldiers, so that you can feel what
they were experiencing
Pathos
O’Brien is reaching out to us on an emotional
level to place us into the story emotionally
“It’s about love and memory, it’s about sorrow.”
Repetition
“It’s about”

8. “Even that story is made
up. I want you to feel what I
felt. I want you to know why
story-truth is truer
sometimes then happening-
truth” (171).

9. In this quotation O’Brien explains
his purpose for distorting facts of the
story.
O’Brien uses the distortion of the
“happening-truth”, to amplify the
emotional truth of the tale.

10. Why?
O’Brien’s purpose in writing is not to
tell us a factual account of a war story.
O’Brien is preserving what was really
felt by these people. Truth.
“happening-truth” vs “story-truth”

11. “Here is the happening-truth. I was once a
soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies
with real faces, but I was young then and I
was afraid to look. And now, twenty years
later, I’m left with faceless responsibility and
faceless grief.
Here is the story-truth. He was a slim, dead,
almost dainty young man of about
twenty. ...‘Daddy, tell the truth...did you ever
kill anybody?’ And I can say, honestly, ‘Of
course not.’
Or I can say, honestly, ‘Yes’” (172).

12. Here O’Brien is illustrating his final
point: the meaning behind the word
truth.
Classically, we know truth to be what
factually is; however, what O’Brien is
emphasizing to us is a philosophical
view of truth emphasizing not facts
but emotional realism.

13. How?
Through his stories.

14. Why should we care?

15. Stories are essential
for the human soul.
Stories teach us and comfort us.
Stories connect bring people together.
They immortalize.
Stories can save what is lost.

16. “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” (218).

17. O’Brien explains how he uses his
stories as a tool to whittle and mold
them with his imagination.
By manipulating the stories this way
O’Brien states they bring people
together, by inviting others to “then
dream along with you”.

18. “And as a writer now, I want to save
Linda’s life. Not her body--her life.
She died of course. ...It was a brain
tumor. ..But in a story I can steal her
soul. I can revive, at least briefly, that
which is absolute and unchanging. In
a story, miracles can happen. Linda
can smile and sit up. She can reach
out touch my wrist and say, ‘Timmy,
stop crying’” (224).

19. Illustrating a Transcendentalist view
“I want to save Linda’s life. Not her
body--her life.”

20. “We kept the dead alive
with stories” (226).

21. Both of these quotes illustrate one of
the most important reasons why
storytelling is so important to us as
humans.
We as humans are mortal.
But words, ideas and stories can live on.
One may be gone, but never lost.
The dead can live.

22. “I’m young and happy. I’ll never die. I’m
skimming across the surface of my own
history, moving fast, riding the melt
beneath the blades, doing loops and
spins, and when I take a high leap into
the dark and come down thirty years
later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save
Timmy’s life with a story” (233).

23. O’Brien’s metaphor symbolizes his
own need for stories and why he has
placed so much emphasis on their
importance.

24. Stories don’t just save the dead..
They save ourselves as well.

25. Finished

26. Works Cited
"Biography Tim OBrien Author."13 Jan. 2011.
<http://www.illyria.com/tob/tobbio.html>.
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1990.