So here's what I've been thinking... I've been talking with a lot of veterans. I've been going to the book talks, listening, watching ... and there is definitely a sense of family that comes through - no matter what the branch of service or the particular experience, it seems that there is a deeper knowledge that those of us who have not been through war simply can't understand. No matter how I search within, how much I listen and ask, no matter how hard I try to pull from my own life it seems as if I am only a spectator. And of course I am just that: a spectator.
I'm grateful to be one, actually. I'm grateful to have never been in a war. Yet, I also feel a bit uneasy in my role as spectator because I'm not just a spectator when it comes to history or war, but I'm also a spectator to the personal horrors recollected by veterans. I am witness to their current state of being as a result of those horrors. I'm grateful for the privilege of being witness and yet immensely troubled by it.
Men and women writhe with survivor guilt, they agonize over memories they can't quite bring themselves to recall, and yet they acknowledge the impact of their personal shop of horrors as it manifests in their daily lives and impacts those around them. What internal struggle to reconcile it all.
Read Good Form, Field Trip and Ghosts.
Then read about the My Lai massacre in your reader's guide
Next, go to http://www.history.com/videos/my-lai-massacre#my-lai-massacre
Now go to http://www.history.com/videos/my-lai-massacre#remembering-fallen-friends
What seems the most potent?
Now consider...
How do you understand the role of 'story' and the activity of 'telling stories' in the way that people, veterans, and you yourself think about your lived experience? How does the 'crafting' of a story help or hinder the telling and retelling of our lives?
In the chapter "Good Form", I wasn't so shocked when TO admitted to us that these stories contain details that are made up. In fact, I respect him even more for admitting that the stories were partially invented, impregnated with details that were untrue and manipulated. I have this unusual sense of understanding, as if we are literally and figuratively "on the same page".
ReplyDeleteHis crafting of these stories is a skill, a way of therapeutically dealing with the horrors he has witnessed. In this way he is not only helping himself, but helping all those who read this book come to an understanding, come to terms with horrors they've witnessed in their lifetimes.
TO says, "I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth."
This justification, to me, indicates a tremendous understanding of himself and why he is writing these stories. He knows that by crafting these stories the way he has it is conveying a powerful message that gives readers insight into the retelling of his lived experiences. He crafts the stories to relate as much as possible to his audience. After all, isn't that an essential component of writing?
Although some details are fictitious I still feel what TO felt. Like I said, I have an unusual, unfamiliar sense of understanding as I read his anecdotes. I see through his eyes and think his thoughts. This makes me appreciate the way he has composed these stories and I wouldn't ask him to change any crafting of these stories because they have helped, not hindered, the way I can deal with my personal horrors.
Guilt, understanding and sadness seem to be potent in these stories of Vietnam. In the survivor's stories there is a constant sadness when retelling events. I noticed a tone of understanding of why situations happened, but astonishment of how horrific the situations were. It seems as though the survivors can relate to the events and the people who experienced the events, yet they will never quite come to terms with the horrific tragedies. Just because they understand the circumstances doesn't mean they will ever get over the repercussions. Just as Emily stated, I'm also grateful that I have never been to war, and I also feel that nothing in my life will ever come close to the horrors that Vietnam veterans experienced. In listening to these stories I feel grateful for life, and realize how quickly a life can be taken. I can't imagine witnessing so many lives ending in tragedy. It greatly saddens me that fathers, sons and husbands lost their lives so young and so quickly. Yet it's so good for me to hear these stories because it makes me appreciate my own life in a new perspective. Those men who lost their lives will never be forgotten, and their spirits will be carried through storytelling.
ReplyDeleteThe most intoxicating of all four of the readings/videos would have to be the My Lai Massacre video. It made me sick to see all the children, women and men dead on the ground. It just makes reading this story of disturbing stories come to life. Like they said it wasn’t the people that were the enemies it was the land. I can understand how tough it would be to tell stories to people that have no idea how or what life over in Vietnam was like. They can’t even imagine what soldiers say or experience from a day to day basis. I can know sort of understand why people exaggerate on telling stories or make stories up. They may feel like the truth is too hard to remember and don’t want to go back to that horrible place. They may also feel like us as readers or listeners can’t imagine anything unless they exaggerate the details to express the truth. I may exaggerate with stories myself but my stories are nothing like the reality of what the soldiers of Vietnam went through. It makes me sad to read the history of people’s lives in a such horrific way and to see the hurt that they were forced to take.
ReplyDeleteMy dad went to Honduras for 6 months when he was in the army. He was “field training”. I say it that way because I don’t believe he really was field training. I was about 6 at the time. When my three younger sisters and I would fight as we got older he would lose his temper and tell us our lives could be much worse. He told us some stories about how the people in Honduras lived, and that would lead into the stories of what some of the people he worked with did. He was trying to make us appreciate what we had, but those other stories seemed to pop in. It was the stories about the people he worked with that got to him the most. He will never be as understanding as TO was in the Lai Massacre clip. The whole experience traumatized him. He didn’t kill anyone or anything, but he was still traumatized. I can’t say that it changed him because I can’t remember what he was like before he left. I do know he told the stories in a less traumatic way than they really were. Maybe because he felt we were too young to hear the truth, but maybe a little because he wanted to remember them as less traumatizing. I know he hasn’t told us all of the stories or the worst of them, but he still got his point across to us. We would always stop fighting (half because of his stories and half because we didn’t want to make him more angry).
ReplyDeleteI will never forget when he was about to go to the Gulf War. His unit was next to ship out, and I could see his terror. To this day I think he was more scared of the thought of what the people in his unit would be like than the fighting. He hated what he saw in Honduras. The thing is this is my story of his story. I was only 6 or 7 when he came home, and I remember his stories even though I don’t remember him at that age. I think his stories help me to understand him better than if I could remember him at the age of 6. By the way the gulf war ended just before he was supposed to leave.
I believe that the constructing of a story to retell it makes all the difference! I have to confess that I have told several of my personal stories to friends late at night. Sometimes, I am able to construct the story in such a way that I feel like I am bringing them along on my journey. Other times, I fail to put details in order, randomly scattering the story so that it falls short of relaying the truth.
ReplyDeleteCommunication brings intimacy. Moreover, when we communicate clearly about our life experiences, we are able to let others into it. When I tell a story haphazardly it usually falls short.
I am moved when I read a well-crafted story of war. I feel as though I have been exposed to a truth that I would not have otherwise known about. I empathize and grieve. TO’s story is well-crafted. He effectively drew me in and exposed me to things I would have never understood otherwise.
To me it seems that all of these include guilt, as Alice said, and to me, the surealness of the war overcomes them, after the fact. Like they are in some type of trance when at war, they are doing what they are told but don't know why and don't realize all the pain they have caused or even seen. In one of the videos he even says that it's a war with the land and not the people but in the end it's still the people. They are losing their lives and their land to the war. Another thing that I saw was the sentiments of the soldiers, again, after the fact. In a few of these the soldiers talk about a physical place that they remember something tragic happen and they feel drawn to that spot. For example, in the field trip chapter, he brings his daughter to see this place where Kiowa was killed. It was a sentimental place for him, as for his daughter, it's just a disgusting smelly place. The people that don't go to war can not have a proper understanding for what truly happened in the war(s). I believe reading about it is not enough! That type of understanding can only come from experience.
ReplyDeleteIn order to tell a story it has to be relate-able to the audience. However, some stories and often the most important stories are not relate-able. War stories are atrocious to us because we have not seen it. We can only imagine what a battlefield must look like, smell like, taste like. We are left to our imaginations to fill in the blanks and sometimes our imaginations are not honest.
ReplyDeleteHonest or not, imagination is relate-able because everyone does it. The men who go to war were once humans that have never been to war. They imagined it at one point too; they use that picture as a reference point to relate to us. 'Crafting' a story (in my opinion) simply means, taking a common image that people have in their minds and filling in the blanks. However, you can not fill it with things that don't exist. I do not know what a dead body smells like, I can only imagine, so the story 'crafter' must draw upon that and exaggerate it so I can have some idea.
The problem with retelling a story that has been told so many times and from so many people is that there are too many pieces. It is hard for me to get a true picture of what the Vietnam War was like because there are so many conflicting stories out there. Not to mention the construed mental images I have due to watching movies like, "Full Metal Jacket" and "Jacob's Ladder".
When I hear stories of war, I just try to keep in mind that the story I am hearing is just one perspective. If I am not hearing the story from someone who was actually there I take very little stock from it; I imagine the telephone game and how many times the story must have been altered to reach me.
When I think of my own life, I laugh. I have had one crazy, unbelievable life to this point. It is hard for me to tell stories from my life because most of them are so outlandish most people don't believe me. Then I compare that to war stories and I think, does it really matter if people believe me or not? Is that the point of telling the story? Who does storytelling benefit the most, the audience or the storyteller? For me, it depends on the story and in the case of war I would have to say it is equally beneficial to both parties. The storyteller is able to relive, and reshape the past while they tell it, filling in the blanks that history has made. The audience, benefits from a story by learning from failures and successes. It is a give and take relationship and it is how humans learn from each other.
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ReplyDeleteBetween the chapters, the reader guide, and the websites, I find myself most affected by the videos. I like what TO said: “it was the land we were fighting, not the people.” So often we want someone to blame. We want to point our finger and say you are the cause and because of you, this happened. Do you think, psychologically, that’s what happened to the soldier who committed the war crimes? The people he killed became tangible objects that he could physically get rid of, similar to what everyone wanted to do with the war: get rid of it. I understand that he was mentally incapacitated, but even TO said that he didn’t approve or condone what the soldier had done but could see how easily it came to happen.
ReplyDeleteI think when TO said he could see how this happened, he was speaking from perspective and this is what I understand storytelling to be- it ultimately comes from perspective. Storytelling also seems to shape our life, for the more we reflect upon our experiences the deeper and more meaningful the experiences can become, so it would only be natural to adjust our telling of the story to fit those understandings.
As all of these resources dug a deep hole of emptiness in my heart and left a lump in my throat, the My Lai Massacre video was the most potent in my opinion. The six minute video seemed to be never ending as I stared at the horrifying pictures of the dead innocent villagers. I couldn’t help but to envision myself and my family in these blameless individuals shoes as I read their heartrending, repulsive story. One soldier described it as being “lost in a death struggle”. He also said that in order to continue in the participation of the war “you have to go insane for 12 months. You have to leave sanity.” Doesn’t this ring an alarm to anyone!? If you have to leave sanity for ANYTHING than how can it be for a good cause?
ReplyDeleteAs for the stories told by the soldiers in Vietnam, I strongly judge them to act as a means of coping with the insanity they have dealt with for so long. We all tell stories everyday because we want the ones closest to us—friends, family members, and loved ones—to feel the same emotions as we do. We want them to understand just as we understand. We want everyone to be on the same page as us. Depending on the experience this is sometimes possible by simply telling a story. However, when it comes to war, I deem that the stories are full of such terrifying and unexplainable experiences that they can never be fully understood by an outsider, or as Emily calls it, a “spectator”. Through the stories told, I believe that we can only get the gist of what actually went on during the Vietnam War.
I sometimes choose not to retell stories about my own experiences throughout my life, due to my belief that my story telling is not always good enough. Telling a story to someone else about certain experiences I have had will only hinder the actual experience. I already know that no matter how I express my story I can never meet the criteria that actually took place and how it made me feel. I respect those who can tell a “good story”, and relive their experience for us as accurate as possible because it can be frustrating sometimes. Most of all I admire the soldiers who retell their stories; for, personally, I don’t think I would be capable.
When telling a story, especially one that is from personal experience the author has a lot decide. He has to decide which facts to tell, whether to embellish, or whether or not it even needs to be told. However, I think TO did a marvelous job with the decisions that he made in order to tell the story. TO did several things that surprised me. Scott alluded to this surprise in his quote “These stories were partially invented, impregnated with details that were untrue or manipulated.” Instead of troubling us with the suspicions and picking truth from fiction, TO lays it on the table. I believe he does this to relate his experience to our prior knowledge, in order for us to understand what he went through and experienced. A quote the I will use for this post is found on page 180,
ReplyDelete“'did you kill anybody?' And I can say honestly, 'Of course not.'
Or I can say, honestly, 'yes'” (180, O'Brien)
Even though I have read this over three months ago, I am still processing what he is trying to tell us, the reader. But I believe, that when it comes to story-telling, or crafting, that things are allowed to embellished, or even written as the authors experience, in order to tell a story. Perspective seems to be everything. As an author he is not only telling his story, but his army buddy's stories as well. So there has to many perspectives that he is writing from. So, for him to answer differentially, honestly, it is dependent on the perspective that he is looking at the question.
For me the videos are much more potent, because seeing on film is different than in my mind. Within my mind I have the ability to shut things out, whereas with video it is there making it real. Seeing all the people laying there dead on the ground is heartbreak and sickening. It is also emotional to think about all the American lives lost during such a horrific time.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to storytelling, I view it as a verbal history. For thousands of years that is how we did pass down history from one tribal or village member to another, so it seems only natural to tell stories. I think when we tell our stories we are release a little piece of ourselves to the world, because it is us who brings the elements to the story from our own lives and experiences.
As I think about crafting a story, I think it is much easier to do verbally and with people whom you trust. I think about a story that I want to tell others, but only tell those whom a truly trust. I also think about the fact that I can verbally say the story, but writing it down seems much more difficult. As if the words on the paper are staring at me in judgment. So maybe for some other they may feel a certain way, maybe the guilt or shame brings people to a point that craft the story is too difficult to actually accomplish and that it stays much safer in their mind to one day be told.
All of these accounts are equally potent to me. All the stories continue to blow my mind, as I could not even begin to relate. The two men in the videos were surprisingly well adjusted and their accounts were told as almost out of body experiences. A coping mechanism I suppose. Sometimes they spoke as if they were telling someone else’s story, as if what they lived through was too heinous to claim as their own. As a reader I have the choice of how I want to feel about the given information, cynical, sad, outraged whatever feelings are evoked, it’s my choice.
ReplyDeleteI feel as if the activity of telling the story in many cases is personal review or the retelling of our lives. TO claims his story telling makes things present and helps him look at things he never looked at. I have caught myself remembering details mid story that I add or omit for whatever reason. Are these embellishments? Maybe so, however they are what the storyteller feels necessary to get the story out.
Perhaps this is what TO is referring to when he speaks of the story truth being truer sometimes then the happening truth. It’s all part of our craft.
We have been telling and hearing stories all our lives. We know what we feel is relevant to retell about our lives using our own personal story telling craft. We navigate others through our lives how we see fit through the telling of our stories. And we choose how we are impacted by others accounts of their lives and experiences.
Seeing the videos was the hardest thing for me. Reading things I can imagine in my mind, but it is my imagination thats giving me the visual, the one that has never experienced what is being talked about. In the videos I am actually seeing what is happening. Seeing all the people lying there on ground dead, especially the children, just made me sick to my stomach. I cant even imagine what these soldiers go through day in and day out, I know that personally I would not be able to handle it. A common theme that I see is guilt, sadness, and emptiness.
ReplyDeleteThe crafting of these stories needs to be relatable to an audience or people are not likely to really listen to what you are saying. When we tell stories we say what we want people to know, which means that all things are not neccessarily talked about. Just because something isnt talked about does not make it irrelavent, it may just be too difficult to find a way to talk about it.
I agree with what both Scott and Heather said. I admire TO more for admitting that parts of the story is fictional. It did make it at times harder for me to read, however, like Heather said stories need to be relate-able and sometimes in order to make things relate-able they need to have some fictional details. At the same time, war is an awful experience that lives with you your entire life. I think that "telling" the story is often a way to deal with that traumatic experience. I recalled a time when my grandfather, who fought in WWII, called all of the grandchildren and all of his children together and told us his story of his time in the war. Listening to him retell of his experience, I could see him kind of drift away and realized that he was probably there and reliving it as he was telling it. It made me both sad and proud at the same time. Sad because he had this experience in his life that he would always live with and proud, because, he had persevered and is living a full life because of it.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to my other post. After watching and reading the links provided, I think the my lai massacre was the most heart wretching to watch. Seeing all the of the children and women that were killed brought to the forefront the idea that their are many victims of war that we never hear about. I think we sometimes forget that their others that are affected by wars than the soldiers fighting it. The soldiers deserve our respect but sometimes we forget the innocents whose whole lives can be ruined because they live in the wrong place at the wrong time.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I noticed was the need to go back and visit where they once fought. Tim O’Brien has written about going back (part true and others not), while Jack Smith spoke about his trip back. I also notice that both men talked about going a little insane while being at war. Neither man, to me, really felt comfortable with what they had done and what they went through. They have an understanding, but not really an approval. I could imagine the two of them sitting together telling stories, nodding with understanding as Emily has mentioned she has observed.
ReplyDeleteI think that storytelling is like therapy. Whether you are a veteran talking about the tough times you lived through in a time of war, or a teacher talking about a rough day at work with a particular troublesome child, storytelling can do wonders. Sometimes when you are trying to get your point across you smudge the truth, but really your just helping others understand what you were feeling. Often when we are telling stories that are hard for us to talk about, we (as in people) just want someone to understand our feelings, not really understand the situation. I think that when a situation is emotional, crafting a story is often the best way to get your point across.
For me, the most potent of the four was the video with Vietnam veteran, Jack Smith. While the video with TO included horrific images of My Lai, TO’s secondhand account of the actual My Lai massacre did not cause as strong of an emotional connection as the telling of Mr. Smith’s firsthand account of his experience in an ambush that killed many. TO’s video account seemed to be more like a commentary of understanding than a telling of a personal experience.
ReplyDeleteLike Kari stated, stories are told from a perspective. I feel that the perspective of a story affects the way we take in a story, how we emotionally connect to it. In The Things We Carried, when TO tells his stories we feel emotionally invested in them; we feel the pain of his experience through his stories. I do not think this connection would have come across as strong without the right perspective. By telling his stories through his own perspective, TO lends “truth” to them for the reader so we may make those connections. Without this connection, I feel that stories just end up being puzzle pieces that we are unsure how to put together.