Waiting For Truth Essay, Research Paper

Shafee Jones- WilsonAdvanced Standing Section 2November 22, 1998Essay #3 Waiting For Truth Truth or an understanding of right and wrong are among the first societal mores impressed upon children. It is from this basic background that children learn to function in society. Without a commonly shared framework of reality and truth, society, nor its members, could function. Truth, as a concept, is central to human existence. Every decision, every action stems from an individual s perception of truth. Truth, however, is not a concrete concept. It is abstract and often intangible. There are two kinds of truth, that which is reliable and that which is valid. Tim O Brien s The Things They Carried, and John Hersey s Hiroshima, are two novels that epitomize these different kinds of truth. Tim O Brien tells the true and valid war story. A valid war story is one that, ” makes the stomach believe (O Brien 84).” Hersey writes the war story that really happened, the one whose facts can be rechecked, a story in which the horror can be quantified. One of the keys to distinguishing between war stories that really happened and true war stories, those that could have happened, is the perspective from which it is told. A war story that really happened is largely an outsider s account of events. This is the perspective Hersey employs in Hiroshima. O Brien s The Things They Carried demonstrates the interior perspective. A second distinguishing factor in these two books is the form and organization employed by each respective author. A true war story, a valid one never ends. It evades being pinned down. The Things They Carried is written as a series of interconnected short stories. The plot does not follow a linear path with a beginning middle and an end. The Things They Carried ends somewhere in the early years of O Brien s life, and begins somewhere in the middle of humping. Hiroshima has a definite beginning; Hersey defines a clear end. A war story that really happened is clearly defined by and in time. Thus, Hersey begins when the bomb drops and follows his six characters right through until the point where he feels their story ends. The truth of war is about. It is not what happened that becomes the factor of overriding importance, but instead the experience. In a war story absolute occurrence is irrelevant. “It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe (O Brien 84).” This type of war story, is that of the insider. For the insider war, the blood and guts, is felt. The insider perspective is about truth in its purest form. This form is felt. It is from this perspective that Tim O Brien writes. ” all that matters is the raw material, the stuff itself What you have to do is trust your own story. Get the hell out of the way and let it tell itself (116).” This is the advice that O Brien follows. The Things They Carried is a true war story. The events did not necessarily happen, but the feeling did. It is only through the eyes of an insider, like O Brien, that a true war story can be told. For a true war story is about feeling and validity. It is arguable that Tales Of The South Pacific is told from the insider s perspective. After all Michner writes about a war in which he fought. In addition it is highly probable that his stories are true, but not necessarily ones that really happened. The confusion arises because the true story Michner tells about war is very different from the one O Brien tells. Michner s war stories are replete with humor, dominated by the anti-hero, and eerily devoid of any blood or violence. One does not feel the war Michner relates in the pit of the stomach. Michner s true war stories are largely those of waiting around. Although this kind of true war story is very different from the kind O Brien tells it is still a true war story, a war story from the interior perspective. John Hersey s Hiroshima is reliable. The war story is quantifiable. It is a war story that really happened, told by a man that was not really there, for people who weren t there. “At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima (Hersey 1).” With this precision Hersey begins his account of the dropping of the atomic bomb. He does not tell what it felt like to be there, for he was not there. His story is reliable, one could check his facts in newspapers and government documents, they would all say eight fifteen August 6, 1945. This is a war story told from the exterior point of view, a war story that really happened. However, this is not the true story. In the true story, 8:15 am is irrelevant. In the true story a bomb exploded sometime in the morning vaporizing many, burning the skin off others, and leaving many more to suffer the pain of radiation sickness, but even this is not the true story. The true story rests within the hearts and experiences of the survivors. The true story is hard raw feeling. Hersey s account is not the true story of the survivors only a written account of the details of their lives. This is a war story that really happened.

Hersey begins his account by situating the occurrence in time and the main characters geographical location in those moments. He ends his story, “The surviving hibakusha had been polled by Chugoku Shimbun in 1984, and 54.3 percent of them said they thought that nuclear weapons would be used again (Hersey 152).” This is another defining factor of a war story that really happened. The organization of the story is linear. There is a clear beginning and end. The reader peeks into the lives of six survivors, following them for over forty years. This type of organization is noticeable when contrasted to the short story form that both Michner and O Brien use. Michner and O Brien do not follow their characters, stories, or feelings directly through time. “The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true (O Brien 88).” One of the old rules is the structure of time. The rule that says stories occur linearly in time and that people move through them linearly is an old rule. When you are in war, “You can t tell where you are, or why you re there, and the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity (88).” In war, and the telling of a true war story, one cannot stay faithful to the old rules for the truth of war makes it impossibility. ” war has the feel- the spiritual texture- of a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity (88).” The clarity that is required for telling a story that really happened disappears into the fog and all that is left is the true story. “I m skimming across the surface of my own history 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 (O Brien 273).” Ultimately this is what a true story is about. This is what feeling and the determination between right and wrong is about. Speaking to and saving the child that first knew clearly, definitely, what was right and wrong. “In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself (88).” The telling of a true war story is about coming to terms with this dichotomy. A true war story leaves behind facts and lets the heart find the truth. It lets feelings become the judge. It is feelings that speak to the reader in a true war story, for ultimately it is not what really happened but what the mind perceives as truth. It is from a common understanding of truth that we as a society and as individuals act. It is how we as a society perceive the truth that determines our common understanding. A war story that really happened has the advantage of being reliable. War stories that really happened will never change, however it is true war stories that appeal to our inner child, the part of us that first understood right and wrong.

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Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Michener, James. Tales of the South Pacific. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1974. O Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.