The Truth Of Reality

The Truth of Reality

Every person has his own perception, known as a personal reality, which is shaped by his interpretation of his surroundings. Tim O’Brien, in “How to Tell a True War Story”, recounts personal experiences of war and discusses how war stories are not completely true or false, rather the truth is determined by the listener (because the truth is shaped according to the beholder’s experience). He concludes by stating that while two people may have differing interpretations of a story, neither of them is wrong. This idea is also seen in Oliver Sacks’ “The Mind’s Eye: What the Blind See”. Sacks studies the affect of the loss of sight on a person’s personal reality. Jonathan Boyarin, in “Waiting for a Jew: Marginal Redemption at the Eight Street Shul”, tells a story of his journey through Jewish culture and how his memories affect him. These three authors discuss the idea that there are numerous ways an event and its truth can be interpreted and one way is not necessarily better than the other. A person’s personal reality is not affected by what he is told, but by the way he interprets what he is told.

Every time a story is told, the listener interprets it differently and none of the interpretations are truer than the other. O’Brien explores this idea in his essay in how people interpret his story. When telling his story, O’Brien encounters a woman who approaches him and says, “as a rule [I] hate war stories” (396), to which he replies, “It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story” (396). Even though his story took place during the war, to him, it is a story of love. Although both O’Brien and the woman have different interpretations of the story, neither is wrong. This idea is also seen in Sacks studies of loss of sight. Sacks learns that every person adapts to the loss of sight in a different way according to his comfort and need. After hearing three separate experiences Sacks says, “I had now read three memoirs, strikingly different in their depictions of the visual experience of blinded people . . . was there any such thing, I now wondered, a “typical” blind experience?” (481). Although every person has a different experience, none are wrong or worse than another, because people relate their experience to their personal life and how they were infected as an individual, not as a “blind” community.

When a person tells a story he tells it the way he remembers it and the listener may interpret the same story in a different perspective. This difference in personal interpretations of a story is caused by the influence of one’s personal reality; the story becomes subjective to the listener. In his essay, Jonathan Boyarin explains that as a young child, his view of others was based on his personal relationship with them. Boyarin describes the people who lived near him in his childhood by saying, “Among the farmers are present and former Communists, Bundists, Labor Zionists . . . and [the] Polish . . . These, however, are not the distinctions I make among them as a child” (79). As a child, Boyarin’s personal reality is naÐ"Їve so his view of the people is naÐ"Їve as well; he cannot comprehend the difference in culture, religion, or ethnicity. If he had been older, his personal reality would have been knowledgeable in that he would understand the importance of religion, ethnicity, and culture, providing a different outlook than his childhood one. In Boyarin’s work, personal reality affects ones interpretation of a situation, but in Sacks’ work, this relationship is seen in reverse: the situation, the loss of sight, changes ones personal reality. The degree to which his personal reality is affected depends on when he loses his sight. A person born without sight is incapable of understanding what it would be like to see; his personal reality differs from a person who loses sight over time. Sacks says, “For those who lose sight early, the very concepts of “sight” or “blindness” soon cease to have meaning, and there is no sense of losing the world of vision, only of living fully in a world constructed by other senses” (476). A person born without sight is born with his personal reality shaped around his other four senses whereas a person who goes blind over time is born with a personal reality based on his sight. What can be understood from these two authors is that a person’s personal reality can affect his interpretation of a situation just as a situation can affect a person’s personal reality.

When a person tells a story, he tells it as he interpreted and understood it. His rendition is then interpreted by others who may question the truth of his story. Although the person tells the story exactly as he remembers it, it may not be true to the original version. This is because ones memory of the event has been shaped by ones personal reality. If memory is shaped by personal reality, then as his personal reality changes, so will his memory of the story. This idea is seen in Jonathan Boyarin’s story when he moves from his hometown as a child. Boyarin says, “Farmingdale is no longer home, and though our new house is only ten miles away, it is