Alfred North Whitehead once said that “There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil”. Tim O’Brien, in his novel of life, war, and truth, often tells half truths in his story, adding in own cognizance in order to make a whole story. At times, his novel seems unreal, and at other times… too real altogether, there are rarely any grays in this style and perception and often readers will be left grasping for a rare lifeline. One of these obscure “lifelines” is found in the depths of “Notes”, where O’Brien bout with himself over Kiowa and Bowker’s lives and deaths becomes exceedingly real.
Although “Notes” is the second of three sequential stories related to Kiowa’s death, it is more about Tim’s own search for peace within himself through storytelling than about the death itself. Tim, in “Notes”, focuses on the guilt that he feels not over Kiowa’s death but over his own endeavors to represent it incredibly. His......
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