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Realistic, striking, and raw diction in a POV piece imbues feeling and therefore belief in the reader.
In the case of The Things They Carried by Tim OBrien, post-war OBrien admits to …making up a few things to get at the real truth (81). When post-war OBrien reflects on the young dainty man he saw dead near the village of My Khe, he believes that his piece of writing will be more impactful should he state that he was the one to end this mans life. He explains his thought process by stating, Here is the happening truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look…Here is the story truth. He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. One eye was shut, and the other eye was a star-shaped hole. I killed him. What stories can do, I guess, is make things present (172). It is clear when post-war OBrien describes his story-truth , he is using much more powerful diction, describing the mans facial features in such a way that it is uncomfortable for his audience to visualize what OBrien writes. When OBrien first describes this man he also personifies the body, He loved mathematics. His eyebrows were thin and arched like a womans, and at school, the boys sometimes teased him (121). This effectively sets the tone of this chapter as that of trauma and regret. Mid-war OBrien is traumatized by what he has done. He repeatedly describes the man, focusing on his eyes writing, His one eye was shut, and the other eye was a star-shaped hole (120).
The tone of trauma and regret built by strong diction and personification, sends the message to the audience that this is not an event one creates; it is experienced and re-experienced every day in the mind of OBrien. It is the truth of post-war OBrien and the truth that the audience will value. As OBrien writes I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth (171) we as readers agree, and thus alter our sense of the truth in the novel.
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