Notes

"By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate if from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others." (pg. 158)

Why does O'Brien feel the need to make up truths in a story? That was the first question that popped in my head when I read this passage. And then it hit me, it is almost like therapy. "You separate" the story "from yourself." In a way it makes it seem as though it didn't not happen to you. You tell the story and add points in the story to make the reader understand what truly was going on in the minds of others by adding incidents that did not occur. The adding is what brings out the truth of the moment. Norman Bowker could not save Kiowa. But by adding the taste of poop and the feelings of Bowker ,O'Brien could not possibly have known, we see the emotion that was in the air. The reader begins to pick up on what that field truly did to the soldiers there present.