Whose Truth Gets Told? Teaching Tim O’Brien and the Power of Narrative

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is one of a handful of books I’ve read in one sitting. One thing I love about the novel is the way it plays with the truth that fiction tells that nonfiction sometimes can’t capture. Tim O’Brien refers to this tension in “Good Form” as “story truth” and “happening truth.” He argues in that chapter (or story) that “story-truth is sometimes truer than happening-truth.” O’Brien’s storytelling challenges readers to consider whether a fictional account can communicate emotional or experiential truths that a factual account might not.

Even though I don’t teach the whole novel to students, I like to teach “How to Tell a True War Story” and “Good Form” because both stories blur the distinction between fact and fiction. O’Brien deliberately unsettles our assumptions about fact and fiction, making these stories especially rich material for inquiry and discussion. Reading these stories allows my students to consider an intriguing question: What makes a story true?

This question becomes even more interesting when we complicate it: Whose truth?

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer critiques American representations of the Vietnam War. His protagonist works as an advisor to a Hollywood director filming a Vietnam War film called The Hamlet. The narrator quickly realizes that the director is uninterested in his input; he simply wants the appearance of having consulted someone who can speak to the Vietnamese experience.

This critique adds another dimension to the discussion. As Nguyen argues through his protagonist, “His arrogance marked something new in the world, for this was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors, courtesy of the most efficient propaganda machine ever created” (134).

A story might communicate an important truth about one person’s experience while obscuring someone else’s.

What happens when students reconsider a story?

Associated Press photojournalist Eddie Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1968 photograph, Saigon Execution. I show this photograph to students and ask them to interpret what they are seeing without giving them context. Many students initially assume the photograph depicts the killing of an innocent civilian. Later, after exploring O’Brien’s stories and an excerpt from The Sympathizer, I show students the photograph again, this time providing historical context. Students return to their original interpretations and consider how the additional information complicates what they believed they knew.

The photograph captures a real event, but the story audiences construct around that event may become more influential than the historical circumstances themselves. In that sense, the photograph raises some of the same questions about story-truth and happening-truth that O’Brien explores in his fiction.

I don’t want to persuade students that factual truth doesn’t matter or that every interpretation is equally valid. Interpretations should be based on the evidence we have before us. I want my students to become more attentive readers and thinkers who recognize both the possibilities and limitations of storytelling. Stories can illuminate experiences we might otherwise struggle to understand, but they can also obscure perspectives, reinforce assumptions, and shape how we remember history.

I created a resource for teaching this lesson, Story-Truth, Happening-Truth, and the Power of Narrative. It’s a two-day lesson that includes teacher guidance, student handouts, and slides, with source references for the copyrighted materials. I’d love for you to check it out if you’re interested.