Every story depicts some kind of truth, background, and moral. In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger, Holden Caulfield is lonely and put himself in the position to believe that he must protect and stop people from losing their innocence. Similarly, in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the life of a soldier is lonely and going into a battle so young can seem like a loss of innocence. In both stories, the authors use truth, or lack of it to emphasize on the morals of the story instead of the truth of the story itself. Both authors used the first person point of view to tell the story which deceives the reader, Salinger uses the perspective of Holden to get a understanding of his own experiences and thoughts whereas O’Brien uses himself as a character which causes a blur in the distinction between fact and fiction. With the stories in the perspective of the narrator it is easy for them to lie and the readers not catch it or ignore it. This shows that the message being conveyed is of greater value than the truth of the story. The idea of loneliness and loss of innocence is not affected by the lack of truth that is being told in each of the stories.
O’Brien uses lies and makes …show more content…
The idea of truth is used throughout both stories but is brushed off and forgotten because its importance is of lesser value than the overall moral of the story. O’Brien uses his stories to not write the true facts and the history of the war but talk about the experience to create a bond between the soldier and the reader. Both Tim O’Brien and Holden Caulfield tells stories to get the reader to really feel and understand the story, and make the past become present by not dwelling on facts but our overall feeling about the