Countless authors use their literary skills to attract and retain audiences from different parts of the world. In essence, although these writers aim at persuading others to accept their thoughts as good position in various issues, they often use lies and opinion to make the readers believe their notions of the stories. In practice, fabrications and exaggerations make stories more appealing and self-reflective, where one can easily relate with what is unfolding in a poem or a story. War literature is often marred with varying types of lies and fabricated narratives. Fabricated persuasions are common in the poem “Do Not Weep Maiden, War is Kind” by Stephen Crane and the short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. The two writers contextually utilize their expertise to implore their assertions upon the readers and audiences. Primarily, the two literary materials highlight the height of utilizing deceptions as an effective tool in war literature, including white lies, error, and restructuring to persuade the target audience and readers.
One of the lies prevalent in both pieces involves white lies. Such a lie is alluded to broad lie in “The Ways We Lie” (p. 181). In Crane’s poem, the poet showcases such type of falsehood in “Do not weep, babe, for war is kind” (stanza 3, line 1). Evidently, in the five stanzas of Crane’s poem, the writer walks the readers right into the battlefield where the soldiers are seen dying and crying from every corner of the environment. Yet, in every stanza, he keeps encouraging and consoling the maiden, who seems to lose loved ones in every verse, to avoid crying. In an ideal world, losing a loved one is excruciating pain that one would obviously cry about. In this poem, the maiden begins by losing her lover in the first stanza and then loses her father in the next before the demise of the son. In other words, Crane is so consumed in comforting the maiden to the extent that his lies have the potential to blind the target about the war. This lie is coined in a situational embroil that one needs to evaluate the implications of each line to understand the values of such implications.
Here, the maiden experienced immense torture, yet Crane uses an outright lie to persuade her to calm down and accept his proposals. Such kind of lie is often known as a white lie because it is a trivial statement aimed at avoiding hurting one’s feelings instead of motivating them amidst their tribulations of life. Such a kind of fabrication is also portrayed in the general narrations of O’Brien. The author presents his experiences in the Veteran war as a mere narrative seeking to soothe the emotions among those affected by the same calamities. Although some of the presented arguments are out-and-out lies, preferably white lies, they help in creating plot and setting turnarounds which are imperative in the development of the whole presentation. Both O’Brien and Crane are influential and showcasing the benefit of white lies in some instances, yet blamable in certain scenarios.
The other prominent type of deception permitted in the poem and the short stories involves the error form of fabrication. Essentially, Crane postulates “little souls who thirst for fight” (Stanza 2, line 2) without a doubt to imply that the soldiers were young men born to endure battlefields, which is not valid in any social setting. No young man can always be yearning for wars, yet there are massive deaths and injuries recorded during the same battle. Typically, such an erroneous statement may persuade the villains of war to believe what the author implies. In a pragmatic situation, nobody would be yearning for deaths and conflict, rather risk their life to fight for their communities or societies. He goes ahead and claims that “these men were born to drill and die” (stanza 2, line 3) to ascertain his prior assertion of the plight of the soldiers in the war.
Such form of fabrication is pivotal in persuading readers to believe that whatever the soldiers went through, their fate was to die and perhaps be buried in the battlefields. Factually, every line in the poem aims at consoling the maiden with a contextual paradox. While every reader would expect similar expressions, it is important to recognize the fact that much of the writer was passionate about every calamity faced by the maiden. Moreover, O’Brien assumes the spiritual war factors and claims “they all carried ghosts” when going to missionary battles (O’Brien, 9). Such assertion implicates a deception by mistake because it is impossible to carry a ghost from one point to another. Nonetheless, one could argue that they are spirits which keep hovering with people on transit. The implicated meaning may present in different ways among the audience. Error fabrications are often standard both in literary tales and poems; in fact, the strategy helps writers to validate certain mysterious myths in human life and war.
Notably, there is a restructuring lie construed in O’Brien’s stories aimed at distorting the contextual implications of various aspects in the scenes. Primarily, in the letters carried by Lieutenant and crew would from time to time vindicate lies peddled to divert the emotions of the reader. For instance, O’Brien asserts that during the first week of April, Jimmy Cross received a charm of good luck and a letter from Lavender described as “smooth to the touch, it was milky white color with flakes of oranges…” (p. 7). This statement is a restructured fabrication aimed at diverting the attention from the intensity of the war situations. Although it may convincingly prove true to some extent, the contextual implications are pivotal in deciding its place in lies within war literature. Likewise, Crane postulates “because the lover threw wild hands toward the sky” (stanza 1, line 2) to avert the attention of the maiden from the intensity of the war effects as she mourns her loved ones in a painful encounter.
Primarily, these two situations tend to highlight how restructured lies have long-lasting effects both in real life and fiction. There are valid omissions committed by the two authors to help them restructure the storyline to help to perpetuate lies that bind. Such type of approach may also benefit in erasing memories of the battlefield as embraced by O’Brien. Although the scenes are gloomy and discouraging, choosing to use restructured summaries would help to achieve the persuasive focus of the stories as well as the poem. Such kind of a lie is built on already existing fabrication as asserted by Class Glossary (n.p.). One needs to follow keenly every affliction as the circumstances unfold within the narratives. The value of streamlined argument portrayed in the two materials is inevitable in understanding the persuasive techniques employed by various writers in different environments. O’Brien asserts that “they carried the emotional baggage of men who might die.. (p. 20)” as a show os a lie within other liesAlthough there is a thin line between restructured lies and opinion, the two writings highlight how the artistic device can manipulate the interpretation of the various attributes of a story.
To conclude, Crane and O’Brien utilized contextual lies such as white, restructuring, and error to persuade readers to buy their insights about war literature. Essentially, the contextual implications of O’Brien’s work as envisaged in the ordeals of the Veteran Wars portrays how he uses storytelling to survive the trauma and agony during these periods. In essence, he utilizes the narrative skills and opportunity to purge unwanted emotions and warns about naïve acceptance of truths based on facts. Likewise, Crane considers the ordeals of the war to console and comfort the victims in different ways. His choice of words and situational understanding showcase how lies can influence the readers’ perceptions. Finally, the two authors use their experiences with pain and trauma from the veteran wars to shape the role of lies in war literature. Through comparative studies, one can realize that the literal implications are practical and worth relating. Much of the information presented in both the poem and the short story is valuable in understanding how lies can also propel the truth about life histories. In essence, the Veteran Wars were indeed crucial moments in global history showcasing the value of struggle for liberation. Thus, the stories would lack excitement written plainly as they occurred; the use of lies induced the desire to relate positively with every calamity. The value of each of these pieces of literature is paramount both in real in literary development. The authors’ technique proves pivotal in explaining the various styles of language learning.
Works Cited
Class Glossary. Starke. N.p.
Crane, Stephen. “Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.” The Works of Stephen Crane 10 1899.
Ericcsson, Stephanie. “The Ways We Lie.” Starke, pp. 177-182.
O’Brien, Tim. The things they carried. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.