True Stories That Never Happened: "The Things They Carried" and "The Little Prince"

"The Little Prince", Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 

What are "true stories that never happened"?

 

    "True stories that never happened" may sound like a contradictory phrase---after all, how can something be true if it was made up by the author? The phrase comes from "The Things They Carried", a series of short stories written by Tim O'Brien. O'Brien makes no effort to conceal the fictional nature of his stories, pointing out in asides that he fabricated certain events or characters in an act of metafictional acknowledgement of the author, but he nevertheless presents them with the same respect and conventions as non-fiction. 

    I define this "genre" that O'Brien employs as one that uses fantasy, metaphor, and fabricated scenes to represent true events that are abstract or hard to explain. Oftentimes, authors find themselves restricted by the "truth" of a story, which this genre puts to the sidelines. More than anything, these stories focus on getting the reader to feel the same emotions that the author feels regarding these events, even if that requires exaggerating or bending the truth. 

    I would argue that another story, "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, uses this same technique. Much like O'Brien, Saint-Exupery blurs the lines between true and untrue by placing himself and his own experiences into the narrative alongside fiction, making no effort to distinguish the two. This gives the story a personal, almost biographical nature despite its obvious use of fantasy.

    These stories have had a profound influence on my own approach to writing, and I think they provide an important view into the long-lasting impact of this style of storytelling. They point out the impact that this genre can have on a reader and the advantages of using fiction to describe these "true events" more accurately. Because these stories focus on emotion, they linger in the reader's mind much longer than non-fiction.

The Things They Carried

 

"The Things They Carried", Tim O'Brien

 

 

    "The Things They Carried" is a grim recollection of the Vietnam War, based on Tim O'Brien's own experiences as a member of the 23rd Infantry Division. It features fictional members of the infantry as protagonists, as well as O'Brien himself---or rather, a character bearing O'Brien's name. The book is told through non-chronological short stories and asides, gradually expanding on each character's relationships and experiences, mostly through O'Brien's point of view. 

 

Tim O'Brien, via NPR

    The most striking and memorable stories from this book, "On The Rainy River"; "The Man I Killed"; and "Speaking of Courage", make excellent use of its genre as a fictionalized truth.

"On the Rainy River"

    Set first chronologically, this story follows O'Brien after he learns that he's been drafted. Attempting to avoid his fate, he tries to run away to Canada by taking a boat across the titular Rainy River. However, as he makes his way down the river, people start appearing on the shores to convince him to leave/stay. These figures aren't just friends or family---soon he's being yelled at from either side by celebrities, fictional characters, cartoons, everyone he's ever known. He's eventually forced to confront his fears, and he's unable to bring himself to face the consequences of abandoning his country. 

    This story, while simple, showcases the strengths of this style of story telling. Rather than telling us that he felt conflicted, O'Brien anthropomorphizes his internal struggle in order to show us how he feels. His guilt yells at him from the American side, while his cowardice and morality encourage him from the Canadian side. Whether or not he ever actually attempted to row across the Rainy River doesn't matter. We know exactly what emotions O'Brien was experiencing upon being drafted through the way he tells this story.

"The Man I Killed"

    In this story, O'Brien is haunted by the imagined version of a man he kills during an ambush. There's an emphasis on guilt, perhaps even O'Brien himself projecting onto this enemy soldier. The man he killed may have been a good person; he could have had a family; he could have not wanted to hurt him; he could have been afraid and hiding; he could have been forced to fight against his will; and yet O'Brien killed him in cold blood. Through his imagining, he paints himself as the villain and is tortured by his guilt about his actions. 

    "The Man I Killed" ties perfectly in with the idea of "true stories that never happened": because he doesn't know what the truth of this man's life was, for all he knows these imagined possibility could have been real. "Good Form", another chapter later in the book, confirms that he made the whole story up. However, he "wanted the reader to feel the same way [he] did during the war", so he crafted a story that summarized all of his guilt and second-guessing of his actions into one singular event. This is exactly what this genre attempts to achieve.

"Speaking of Courage" (TW: mentions of suicide)

    "Speaking of Courage" is my favorite story from "The Things They Carried". It's also my least favorite. It stayed with me long after I had finished reading it, and is in my opinion the most striking and devastating story in the entire book. 

    Rather than O'Brien, this story follows Norman Bowker, one of his fellow infantrymen. Set after the war, it chronicles Bowker's attempts to return home and reenter society. However, this is easier said than done; his girlfriend has married someone else, and all of his friends were killed in combat. People don't want to talk about the war, and soldiers are given the cold shoulder upon returning. After all, the United State's efforts in Vietnam were a failure. Bowker drives in circles around the town, imagining conversations he might have about his experiences. He tells his father about the medals he won, as well as the ones he didn't win. He repeats the phrase "speaking of courage" at the beginning of all of his "conversations", as if he's joining into them, rather than starting them. While he doesn't have anyone to tell these stories to, imagining what he might say if he had an audience serves as his catharsis as he drives. 

    His circles around the city, watching from the windshield, highlight the isolation Bowker feels from the rest of society. He feels stuck, driving around and around on the same path repeating the same stories while everyone else moves on without him. "Notes", the aside that follows "Speaking of Courage", elaborates that Bowker himself asked O'Brien to write the story for him, then suddenly took his own life. He was never able to rejoin society after the war. This emotional gut-punch made the story linger in my mind several years after I first read it.

 

The Little Prince

 

"The Little Prince", Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "The Little Prince" has a much lighter subject matter than "The Things They Carried". It chronicles the travels of the titular little prince as he makes his way through the stars and planets before landing on Earth, serving as a metaphor for growing up as well as a social and philosophical commentary. The story is told second-hand by the aviator, who the prince meets in the desert. While the meaning of the story is up for interpretation, it's clear to me that both the prince and the aviator are reflections of the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. 

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, via Britannica

    An aviator himself, his plane once crash landed in the middle of the desert during a flight, where he experienced extreme dehydration and hallucinations before being led to water by a local nomad. Similarly, the aviator in his story crash lands in the desert before meeting the prince, who keeps his spirits up with his stories and ultimately leads him to water. As the narrator of the story, the aviator serves as a stand-in for Saint-Exupery as the author. 

    The prince is a less direct reflection of the author. Saint-Exupery wrote "The Little Prince" in a rented mansion in Long Island, which he felt confined in, sneaking off into the city much like the prince leaving his asteroid home to explore the cosmos. The prince's rose is likely based off of the disposition of Consuelo, Saint-Exupery's wife. In "Letters to a Stranger", Saint-Exupery even signs his letters with an image of the prince, equating himself to the character. 

    I believe the prince represents his childhood self, or perhaps his memories of this self. The prince has a child-like sense of wonder and confusion about the world, constantly confronted with the strangeness of adults. He contrasts the aviator's pessimism and resignation towards the state of the world. They serve as two halves of the same whole: Saint-Exupery himself.

    Like O'Brien, Saint-Exupery treats his subject with the same seriousness and conventions as non-fiction. The aviator recounts the story as a memoir. He even acknowledges that he could have told the tale as a fairy tale, but he "didn't want [his] book to be taken lightly. Telling these memories is so painful to [him]". All of the illustrations in the book, done by Saint-Exupery himself, are attributed to the aviator, The prince even comments on them as he creates them, telling him the ears on the fox are too long and "look more like horns". Saint-Exupery blurs the lines between reality and fiction by doing this, tying himself to the character of the aviator as he recounts the story of the prince. 

    The prince was not created for this story specifically. The opposite is true, actually. Saint-Exupery had been drawing the prince on his letters and in the margins of his diary long before the book's creation, and was encouraged to use the character for a children's book. Saint-Exupery, who at the point had only written novels, held children's books in the highest regards. "We know all too well that fairy tales are the only truth in life," he wrote in "Letters to a Stranger". This sentiment is reflected in the moral lessons that he weaves within "The Little Prince", as well as his insistence within the story that the events described are true.

    While a fantasy story about a cosmos-traveling prince, "The Little Prince" holds just as much truth in its narrative as the stories told in "The Things They Carried".

 

So what?

 

    These stories hold a powerful lesson behind them for writers: as Tim O'Brien states, "the truth of a story doesn't matter so much as what the story is trying to say". Nonfiction is often held to a higher regard than fiction, its value held in its honesty and dedication to the truth. I would argue that fiction can be just as, if not more, true than an entirely factual nonfiction account. I've read many stories about the Vietnam War; none have impacted me as profoundly or stuck with me as long as "The Things They Carried" has. "The Little Prince" is a deeper look at the life and beliefs of Antoine de Saint-Exupery than the history recounted in the bonus content of my 75th anniversary edition of the book. Through fiction, we can create stories that are truer than life itself.