The chapter “‘You’ll Never Believe What Happened’ Is Always a Good Place to Start” from the Native Narrative “The Truth About Stories” by Thomas King explores the twisting path of how stories shape who we are, how we understand things, and how we interact with the world around us. Thomas King strengthens his argument by giving a detailed example that better, proves what he is trying to say. He tells a story about the moment he discovered what happened to his father, which I believe answered a lot of questions in his life. The author's father left when he was a little boy. The father remarried two more times, had seven more children who never knew that the authors nor his brother existed until the day of all their father's funeral. In this chapter …show more content…
Land mines. Suicide bombing. Sectarian violence. Sexual abuse. Children stacked up like cordwood in refugee camps around the globe” (King,8). I think that what the narrator is saying is extremely true. The hard part is like all negative things, depressing stories often are strong and dominant two other stories that are equal but more positive. It is hard not to feel that they are everywhere one looks. I find that if you listen to too many bad stories it leads to confidence and depression. Because after all what can you do about the plane that crashed with no survivors, or the bus that flipped on the snow covered pass. The sad thing about stories is that “once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world” (King10), that plane with no survivors cannot be taken back, the article in the news about the bus that flipped is read by thousands of people and cannot be taken back. The author of the “Truth About Stories” never says whether he thinks that not being able to take back stories is a good or bad thing, but rather he states that “you have to be careful with the stories you tell. And you have to watch out for the stories you are told” (King,10) because they will shape who you
There's some truths that just aren’t told; some stories are too horrific to relive, and they just have to let the past be the past. In the Things They Carry In the vignette How to tell a true war story it reveals a story about a group of young men serving their time in the Vietnam War. A group of US military men went up into the mountain side and sit there silently; Tim O'Brien narrates "They don't got tongues. All ears" (69). There's a fine line between story truth and happening truth but story truth is superior because it's the story everyone hears.
For example chapter 1 Southern Sudan, 1985, “Stay away from the villages-run into the bush. He went to the door and looked out again. Go! All of you, now!” This shows that war is a huge hardship in southern Sudan by pushing kids out of school because they are endangered.
“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.” (Sue Monk Kidd). In The Things They Carried, O’Brien is clear in saying that he would agree with this as without stories, people would be very blind about their past and in some cases, what to do in the future. Sherman Alexie and Tim O‘Brien tell stories to help teach people, or show that people are naturally good at heart but they’re ideas can change based on events that they experience or witness in their lives.
All the stories aren’t going to be correct or all the quotes, but that’s what makes memoirs so good. You get to see how other people watched the main character go through challenges while still seeing it in the main character’s eyes. This isn’t seen in any other type of genre. Knowing that memories are flawed and that a memoir isn’t going to be completely true doesn’t change the genre, it just shows us how memoirs can capture a bundle of memories and put them into a great
Aristotle wrote, “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light (Aristotle)”. The Holocaust was one of the darkest times humanity has ever seen. A machination brewed by an extraordinarily perverse man that resulted in the deaths of millions, and robbed millions more of their faith and hope. Families were torn apart, towns were destroyed, and humanity lost, all to satisfy one man’s extreme racism and psychotic agenda. If however, one only chooses to focus on the darkness, they might overlook the light, specifically in the two stories of boys who survived against all odds and shared their tales years after defying death.
After gruesome tragedies, most people who experience them become numb. If they are show emotions too much, people blame the tragedy. This numbness prevents the survivors from having normal, uncomplicated lives. The tragedies aren’t the only thing that contributes numbness, how people treat survivors also plays a major role in it. In the story, “Soldiers Home” a man named Krebs from a small town returns home from World War II.
Storytelling in history plays a crucial role in stopping repetition and suffering, as experiences are passed down from one generation to the next. In all three of these books, loss of freedom,
All survivors from 21st century wars have traumatic memories that people can sympathize for and stories that are cringe worthy. Two 21st century war autobiographies that exemplify how gruesome the war was in Sierra Leone, Africa are The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara and A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. These real accounts from children who grew up during these hard times give insight on how the standards of life have changed.
This is related to The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien when O’Brien says By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.
"Speaking of Courage" written by Tim O'Brian does a fantastic job at providing examples of both story truth and happening truth. O'Brian writes this vignette in such a way that one might disagree whether it is happening or story truth; this literary analysis will further explain the words that Tim writes about, and how they impact his theme, or facts, of the story. "The war was over and there was no place in particular to go" (131). The first line that readers will read is the above quote. The quote that O'Brian states is a very powerful quote because he is talking about Norman Bowker, the protagonist of this vignette, and is telling the readers that Norman literally has nowhere to go.
Story is an integral element in human life. Stories are the way humans have shared and learned for thousands of years. Storytelling is different from story writing. When a story is told, the original content lingers as long as the storytellers maintain that content. Once the story is retold it takes on different details and meaning.
As time progressed, I realized that you write your own story. The individual creates his or her own
The narrator is no longer able to determine the difference from reality from her illusions. Such as seeing the woman in the wallpaper move, which means that the narrator is the touch with reality and wishes to do what she wants. In addition, she also sees the woman not only in the wallpaper, but imagines that the room she is staying in used is meant to be something but in reality, it was a room to keep her. Moreover, the narrator cannot express herself because society will not allow it and is dominated by her role as a woman. People have beliefs that short stories that are deemed reliable.
Storytelling has such a large impact on all stages of life. Stories are told to teach a lesson, give hope, or get someone through a hard time. Tim O’Brien uses storytelling in his book, The Things They Carried, to teach lessons from war, and help readers understand about the baggage people bring to war. The publisher section of this novel has this warning in it, "This is a work of fiction. Except for a few details regarding the author's own life all incidents, names, and characters are imaginary” (O'Brien).
The scene then changes to the narrator’s childhood, a lonely one at it. “I lay on the bed and lost myself in stories,” he says, “I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway.” The main narrative starts as he recalls a