What Really is the Truth?

     While the story “Good Form” was one of the shortest and simplest, I feel it perfectly summed up what truth means to O’Brien in his stories.  He said, “I want you to feel what I felt.  I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth” (171).  O’Brien goes on to tell the story about the man he witnessed die, but then says the “story-truth” is that he killed the man.  I believe that in some cases, such as this one, emotions speak louder than the facts.  What a person feels in the moment is his or her truth, and for the sake of sympathy and emotion, the “happening-truth” does not seem to matter all that much.  With this comes a fine line, though.  To what extent can a person believe a story solely on the emotions of the storyteller?  Do you not question the validity of the story because the storyteller pours so much emotion into it?  When O’Brien told the story about the man he killed, I never questioned whether or not he actually killed the man or just felt some blame for the man’s death.  In actuality, O’Brien did not kill that man, but he felt as though he did, and that is the truth we were given and believed. 
     Going back to the quote, I want to also focus on the first sentence: “I want you to feel what I felt.”  As in most stories, the author or storyteller wants you to feel a certain emotion and wants you to put yourself in his or her shoes.  In order to do this, O’Brien created a new truth that was his version, but it worked in making the reader feel what he felt.  The story-truth is definitely truer than the happening-truth in O'Brien's stories because his emotions mattered more than the actual facts.  In stories like these, the correct factual details have very little importance, and what really matters is the message and emotion O'Brien is able to share with the reader.          

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