I Want the Truth, Nothing but the Truth (Ch. 18)

"I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth." This sentence caught my attention because mostly because I had to reread it ten times before the words came out right in my mind. It was quite confusing for me and I am still not sure I understand it completely or even half way. To me, I think it means that sometimes to really get people to understand something, a truth or a moral, one has to make up a story. I think it is kind of like Aesop's fables, The Tortoise and the Hare, or one of Jesus' parables. The author hadn't been brave enough, I guess, to look before, so he had to make up a story. But, making up a story was even more true I think. The ones who are reading the novel but have not experienced the horror need a face, need a person, need a life to mourn for and to think about. We were not there to see a life extinguished like the soldiers were, so the story-truth is more true for us, while the happening truth is true for the soldiers because they are still haunted in their dreams by the faceless deceased.