Happening-truth in dialogue

The theme of story-truth and happening-truth is very significant throughout the book.
O'Brien doesn't keep it back in mystery as a symbolic message. Instead he openly talks
about the differences between the two in the book itself. He also addresses this subject in
his interview when he says, "...whose going to remember every scrap of dialogue? Most
of that speech has to be made up." So, O'Brien understood this, and whether consciously
or not, he gave us a fantastic example of it amidst one of his personal stories.

I have already returned the book, but I'll do my best to remember the details.

This example is given during his story about his adolescent girlfriend, Linda. It comes in
the dialogue by Nick Veenhof. The old bully now reformed friend, told Tim at school the
terrible news that Linda had died. I wish I had the book on me, but Nick's dialogue,
including word choice, sentence structure, pauses etc., shot me back to O'Brien's old Nam
buddies. His dialogue was a clear reflection of Rat or Azar or any of the other guys.
"Kicked the can...", "bag of cement...", really took me off my seat to see such a resemblance
between this 4th grade kid and O'Brien's comrades. Did O'Brien structure the dialogue
like that on purpose? With his caliber of writing, I would like to think so. I think the
reason he did it was to show the point above. Realistically, a 4th grader wouldn't
naturally approach such a horrible subject with such abruptness or metaphoric
symbolism. I would say, however, that it would be something a worn down Nam vet
would say.

This one line of dialogue shows how even this supposed "unattached" story's truth was
worn away by forgetfulness. Just like many of his other stories, he did the best he could
putting it together despite accuracy. O'Brien wanted us to read this and understand it so
that the themes of the book could remain solid. In the end, his theme of happening-truth
was maintained as the emotions and feelings still came through the dialogue.