The other day in class, we were discussing Tim’s lies and what
they meant to us. Mr. Mitchell and some other students seemed incredibly
frustrated by the fact that the biggest things, including the man Tim “killed”
and Norman Bowker, were lies. Others believed that, in a work of fiction, we
shouldn’t be surprised when the author gives us a little fiction, and thus
didn’t understand why everyone was all up in arms about Tim lying. The last
group of students, the one that I belong to, weren’t incredibly bothered by the
majority of Tim’s lies but found his invention of Kathleen to be his most
betraying and despicable lie, despite the fact that it’s arguably his most
insignificant. Since credibility is such a discussed topic in this collection,
I decided that for my blog post I’d give my own opinion, as well as an argument
for why the lie about Kathleen was so frustrating.
All of Tim’s big lies seem to suit some larger meaning. Inventing
Norman Bowker gave him the opportunity to describe a part of himself that will
never truly recover from the war, a part of him that died that he will always
carry with him. The story and detail about the man he killed humanizes the
Vietnamese soldiers and gives us as readers a chance to experience the pain and
fixation that comes from killing another soul. Just as Tim states, he wants to
give us the true war experience. But that experience is much too subtle and
complex for civilians to be able to pick up on, so instead he divides the
primary emotions and experiences up into little stories whose drastic nature
gives us the tools we need to actually be able to understand a fraction of the
war experience. Which is why he says that truth is relative in recounting war,
because the stories that will give us true understanding are fake.
Personally, I understand that Tim must craft stories in order to
accomplish his goal, giving his readers an understanding of war like they’ve
never had before. Still, I feel betrayed by the invention of Kathleen. This lie
is so small and unimportant, which is precisely why it matters so much. The way
I see it is if your friend asks you to borrow $200 so she can meet her rent.
Then she asks for $100 to take her kid to the doctor, and maybe $320 for the
electricity bill. Then she asks for $30 because she really wants a manicure.
The $30 is a lot less than everything else she’s borrowed, but the difference
is that everything else was a necessity, something she couldn’t operate
without. Asking for money for a manicure on top of everything else is just a
slap to the face, just like Kathleen. We can deal with all of Tim’s lies
because we know they’re a necessity for him to get his point across. But
Kathleen, a small invention that doesn’t add anything to the story, pushes it
overboard because it’s a frivolous invention. What do you guys think? Which of
Tim’s lies piss you off the most and why?
I agree very much with your point. This is such an insignificant detail that I believe it is a breach of contract even in fiction to lie about. O'Brien writes a realistic/historical fiction which is supposedly based in truth and somewhat in fact. That is why it is difficult for me to think that every single part of this book is fiction or as many people in our class would say, a lie. I think that if Tim doesn't use his name in the stories it's not as big of a deal, but then again we would not become as close to O'Brien's characters. It's a very thin and delicate line that O'Brien is walking.
ReplyDelete"Lie" still seems to me a tricky, morally charged way of putting it. The author is not under oath, and the book is plainly heralded on the title page as "a work of fiction." There's a character named Tim, who is a writer of war stories, and in a few of these stories he presents a fictional character named Kathleen, and we assume these characters have some close connection to the author himself--and they do, presumably. The age of the "Tim" character checks out, and we certainly believe him when he says he writes a lot of war stories. But the Kathleen "lie" isn't even among those that he reveals within the book--you have to go outside the text and look up biographical info about the author. If no one had looked up that extraneous information, within the confines of the book the Kathleen character wouldn't bother us at all. I guess it's just not clear to me why an author of fictional stories has some responsibility to be transparent about his personal/family life. (At the same time, I get why O'Brien *invites* these very questions, as the book postures itself as being truthful and forthcoming about his personal life. It's a conundrum.)
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