{"id":5179,"date":"2019-12-09T20:39:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T00:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=5179"},"modified":"2025-10-03T11:25:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T15:25:36","slug":"the-power-of-storytelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-power-of-storytelling\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Storytelling to Resurrect the Dead (Things They Carried)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>How is the power of storytelling depicted in Tim O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s <em>The Things They Carried<\/em>? How can the power of storytelling help assuage the wounds of war?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ll cover how Tim O&#8217;Brien uses semi-fictional stories of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/tim-obrien-vietnam\/\">Vietnam War<\/a> to demonstrate how powerful storytelling can be in conveying the brutality of war and reviving those long gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p><em>Editor\u2019s note: This article is part of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/hub\/society-culture\/arts\/storytelling-guide\/\">Shortform\u2019s guide to storytelling<\/a>. If you like what you read here, there\u2019s plenty more to check out in the guide!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-the-power-of-storytelling\"><strong>The Power of Storytelling<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>A frequent theme throughout the book is how telling fictionalized narrative stories brings true experiences alive. O\u2019Brien discusses the difference between happening-truth and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/good-form-the-things-they-carried\/\">story-truth<\/a>. Happening-truth is just the literal recounting of events that happened, while story-truth is imbued with fictional or exaggerated elements. Story-truth, however, is more real, because its sensationalized features more fully convey to the reader the emotional power of what happened. <strong>Stories can be truer than truth.<\/strong> This is the power of storytelling.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>O\u2019Brien experiments with this theme throughout the book, by relating emotionally traumatic episodes to us (like his killing of a young Vietnamese soldier), only to reveal to us later in the narrative that they did not actually happen the way he told us. Nevertheless, the stories are \u201ctrue\u201d because they convey to us what it felt like for O\u2019Brien to be in these situations in a way that the literal truth (or happening-truth) never could.&nbsp;<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He notes that true war stories aren\u2019t parables\u2014they\u2019re not meant to instruct, impart morals, serve as examples of good conduct, generalize, or engage in abstraction. This isn&#8217;t the power of storytelling. <strong>What makes the story true is the reaction it produces, not the content itself.<\/strong> Thus, something may happen and still be a complete lie, while another thing may be pure fiction and yet truer than the actual truth.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For O\u2019Brien, a writer, <strong>storytelling is an act of both catharsis and resurrection.<\/strong> He can process his own war experiences and make sense of them by reshaping them into a narrative. But he can also see the dead again, make them smile and speak. He likens his characters to books on a library shelf that haven\u2019t been checked out for a long time. They are lying dormant, waiting for him to check them out and bring them to life once more\u2014<strong>to make them immortal through storytelling.<\/strong> Immortalizing its subjects is part of the power of storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-truth-and-fiction\"><strong>Truth and Fiction<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Looking back after Vietnam, <strong>O\u2019Brien ponders what makes a \u201ctrue\u201d war story<\/strong>. He notes that true war stories aren\u2019t parables\u2014they\u2019re not meant to instruct, impart morals, or serve as examples of good conduct. True war stories also don\u2019t generalize or engage in abstraction. Even adages like \u201cwar is hell\u201d are unbelievable to O\u2019Brien because they lack the gut-punch sensation and raw disgust that such a story is meant to provoke. <strong>What makes the story true is the reaction it produces, not the content itself.<\/strong> Thus, something may happen and still be a complete lie, while another thing may be pure fiction and yet truer than the actual truth.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>True war stories instead convey the emotional weight of the war experience. As such, obscenity and cruelty are central elements of this kind of storytelling because <strong>war <em>is <\/em>an obscene, vile, and dehumanizing experience.<\/strong> The power of storytelling comes in conveying this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>O\u2019Brien thinks about how <em>he <\/em>has made the transition from Vietnam to the world after. He has done this by telling stories, which he likens to clearing the throat. <strong>Storytelling enables him to clarify and make sense of his experiences<\/strong>, objectifying them and separating them from himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-power-of-storytelling-and-linda-s-death\">Power of Storytelling and Linda&#8217;s Death<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>O&#8217;Brien tells the story of how his childhood girlfriend, Linda, died of cancer at age nine. His experience with Linda was O\u2019Brien\u2019s first glimpse into the power of storytelling. After her death, he began to invent elaborate stories in which Linda was still alive. His dreams and his stories became his secret meeting place with his lost friend. He could bring Linda to life again by telling her story. He could make her real, make her smile and speak. In one of his dreams, the dead Linda likened herself to an old book on a library shelf that hadn\u2019t been checked out for a long time. <strong>All she could do was wait for someone to check her out\u2014for someone to tell her story and bring her to life again.<\/strong><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even amid the brutality of the war, the men were always telling stories about the dead to make them seem more vivid and present. This was how the line between story-truth and happening-truth became blurred. <strong>The more vivid the stories were, the more alive and of this world the dead seemed to be<\/strong>. If they could tell stories about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/curt-lemon-the-things-they-carried-a-macho-soldier-faints\/\">Curt Lemon<\/a> trick-or-treating through a rural Vietnamese village or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/ted-lavender-the-things-they-carried\/\">Ted Lavender<\/a> being sedated on tranquilizers, it was almost as if they weren\u2019t gone. <strong>Like with Linda, storytelling brought the body and soul together.<\/strong><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How is the power of storytelling depicted in Tim O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s The Things They Carried? How can the power of storytelling help assuage the wounds of war? We&#8217;ll cover how Tim O&#8217;Brien uses semi-fictional stories of the Vietnam War to demonstrate how powerful storytelling can be in conveying the brutality of war and reviving those long gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[63],"class_list":["post-5179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","tag-things-they-carried","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Power of Storytelling to Resurrect the Dead (Things They Carried) - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How is the power of storytelling demonstrated in Tim O&#039;Brien&#039;s The Things They Carried? 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