Storytelling In The Things They Carried

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Storytelling is a method in which authors use to tell an experience or an important event that had occurred in their life. In Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid and in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, storytelling is definitely defined as a control feature. In Annie John, there are scenes where characters tell stories.. Annie’s autobiography the moments when she recognizes how what she tells has an impact in how others see her and that she can manipulate the truth for effect and so does her mother. Annie also imagines her “story” moving to Belgium, and recognizes her own “self” and it is created by the sum of her experiences. In The Things They Carried, the author Tim O’Brien describes his past, present, and future in front of him in the …show more content…
In The Things They Carried this is evident when O’Brien says the following: “ He lay face up in the center of the trail, a slim, dead, almost dainty young man (108). In this passage, O’Brien uses the power of storytelling to convey war in person. This quote depicts his kill while he was in war. He makes a very descriptive description if his appearance as dead. In Annie John, the power of storytelling is evident in the “crocodile scene”: She was standing half inside the door, half outside. Her body was in the shade of our house, but her head was in the sun. When she laughed, her mouth opened to show off big, shiny, sharp white teeth. It was as if my mother had suddenly turned into a crocodile” (84). In this passage, Kincaid uses the power of storytelling to make herself the center of attention but also manipulates others through her mother’s stories as well as her “autobiographical essay”. This depicts a story of her mom. It shows the love/hate relationship with her mother and shows deception of her mother. In conclusion, both works convey the power of storytelling telling. Kincaid uses the manipulation of others and her mother while O’Brien uses descriptions to describe what is like to be in
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