Response: "What is O'Brien's purpose in writing this novel?"

O'Brien wrote this novel in order to "remember" or rather show himself and the reader that which is worth remembering. According to O'Brien, "sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future" (O'Brien 36). By saying this, O'Brien is describing how he writes in order to remember how we got here. This suggests that he believes that how we got here matters. As he says later in the book, “if the answer matters, you’ve got your answer” (O’Brien 79). He is saying that if it matters whether a story is true or not, if one would feel cheated if it wasn’t, the story itself doesn’t actually matter. But if it’s meaningful whether it’s true or not, then it’s a true story even if it never happened. Thus, even though he reveals that the entire book may or may not be true, he is showing that it still matters, that people should still know and remember these things. Again, later in the book he says "by telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths" (O'Brien 152), describing how the act of remembering and the act of writing can make one see them in a new light, and makes one see the "certain truths" that are in the story. In other words, storytelling is for looking back on what happened before, separating what matters from what doesn’t, and remembering that which is important.