Intro to V.W. & TTTC

The Vietnam War &
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

•Post-modernism stemmed from the horrific atrocities of World War II

•The filming of a war

•The filming of death camps

•You didn’t just live it, you saw it

•Human horror that lacked language to convey its impact

•It lasted roughly until the 1990’s, and is still present in today

•Post-modernism says there is OBJECTIVE truth and EMOTIONAL truth and they don’t always serve to tell each other the same story

Thus...Postmodernism

• it’s stripped down language strives to convey facts

• the facts are horrific enough.

• Except FACTS and TRUTH and OBJECTIVITY are not always sufficient to telling the utter truth about something

Limits of modernism

Postmodernism

​Truth vs Truth

•Post-modernism states that there is factual truth and emotional-truth

•And to convey emotional-truth, you sometimes have to break narrative rules of LOGIC, COHESIVENESS, and CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

•For instance, telling the root of the problem may require telling the story out of order, or changing details, or letting magic happen in the story, or misleading about details, or repeating the same detail 47 times.

•These strategies each serve to find the EMOTIONAL TRUTH of a conflict

In contrast, "happening-truth" refers to the literal, verifiable facts of what actually occurred. O'Brien grapples with the challenge of conveying the complex human truths that exist beyond mere factual reporting.

Happening Truth

O'Brien introduces the concept of "story-truth" - a version of events that may not be completely factual, but captures the emotional essence and significance of an experience.

​Story-truth

Postmodernism