“Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.”
Pablo Picasso
According to Pablo Picasso, “Art is the lie that makes us realize truth.” In other words, all forms of art, including novels and plays, show us an ever-present reality that are ably seen through a work of art. This is shown to be true in The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, where the author uses his experience in the Vietnam War to create fictional stories that craftily describes the feelings of war. This is also evident in the play, Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller, where he skillfully uses his fictional play as a way to depict the lives of certain characters in postwar 1950’s America.
In his fictional novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien creates many different war stories during the Vietnam War. While Tim O’Brien clarifies that he was in the Vietnam War, he creates these stories as a form of art to dexterously describe a soldier’s feelings during the war. For example, in one chapter titled “The Man I Killed,” the author artfully describes the story about the Vietnamese soldier he killed. In doing this, he describes the most intricate details, describing the soldier as a “dainty young man” (p. 118). In the process, though, O’Brien later writes, “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer than happening-truth” (p. 171). While he admits to the story being a “lie,” he uses his words to make the reader feel this “truth” that often comes from the art of story telling.
Similarly, in Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller uses his fictional play to create a critique of 1950’s America. Willy Loman, the play’s main character, has a belief that someone who is “well liked” means that they are a successful person in the world. Her says, “The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want” (Act I).
However, as the play goes on, Willy begins to realize that happiness is something that one cannot attain simply through being “well-liked.” Ultimately, Willy kills himself by the end of the play, tragically unable to “get ahead.” Through his artful techniques, Arthur Miller reveals a character that lives by a concept that u leaves him upset with the state of his life. Being “liked” never helped Willy become successful; it only led to his demise.
Although two very different stories, both Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman reveal truth through clever techniques. In The Things They Carried, the author uses creative language in his novel to portray gruesome events of a war. In using the creative technique of describing a war that he was a part of, he ably describes events using his story-telling abilities to craft feelings of a soldier in the war. Like Tim O’Brien, Arthur Miller uses his play to create characters that are affected by their surrounding world. In his wonderful ability to create characters that define a time period, Miller allows his creative ability to resonate through his playwriting, a technique that ably defines truth through a fictional play.
“Art is the lie that makes us realize truth.” In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, truth is realized through O’Brien’s war experience, especially his experience of “the man he killed,” is well described through his ability to describe a story that didn’t necessarily happen to him, but probably happened to a soldier in the war. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Miller writes of a character who slowly realizes how his philosophy that someone who is “well liked” is one who succeeds fails him, leading to his demise. In the postwar state that America was in, Miller evokes a tragic character in search of deeper meaning in his life. Both works of art, although quite different, portray art as a form of truth through the authors’ skilled ways of doing so.
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