A Literary Analysis of How to Tell a True War Story

Within the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story,” O’Brien writes about a story that Mitchell Sanders recounts to be true. The surrealist part is when Sanders talks about how they heard noises within the forests of Nam. Sanders says, “...but after a while they start hearing -you won’t believe this- they hear chamber music… Then after a while they hear gook opera and a glee club…” (Pg. 71). When he says this he is really adding details to pad the story up. Like when Sanders say, “The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks. It talks. Understand? Nam - it truly talks.” (Pg. 71). He means to say that he added those things that they heard because there were sounds they heard that couldn’t be explained. Later on he says that those things they heard

Most authors who write about war stories write vividly; this is the same with Tim O’Brien as he describes the lives of the soldiers by using his own experiences as knowledge. In his short story “The Things They Carried” he skillfully reveals realistic scenes that portray psychological, physical and mental burdens carried by every soldier. He illustrates these burdens by discussing the weights that the soldiers carry, their psychological stress and the mental stress they have to undergo as each of them endure the harshness and ambiguity of the Vietnam War. One question we have to ask ourselves is if the three kinds of burdens carried by the soldier’s are equal in size? “As if in slow motion, frame by frame, the world would take on the old

Fifty-eight thousand Americans were killed, two thousand captured, and three hundred fifty thousand maimed and wounded in Vietnam. 271,000 veterans of the Vietnam War may still have post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and for many veterans, the PTSD symptoms are only getting worse with time. Yusef Komunyakaa was born in Louisiana, he served as a war correspondent and was the managing editor of the Southern Cross during the war, for which he received a bronze star. 'Facing It' by Yusef Komunyakaa explores the emotional aftermaths of war and is about a veteran visiting the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., and his emotional struggles as he deals with the reality of going back to his normal routines at home, and the flashbacks of the horrors he faced in the war. Today, I will reveal how Yusef's skillful use of antethesis and metaphors positions his readers to accept his representation of life after war.

The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.

Hundreds of bodies littered the ground. Sounds of explosions and endless gunfire filled the air. Soldiers, with their uniforms splashed in crimson, fought viciously and ruthlessly. Their main objective, which was to win the battle, took a backseat to their newfound desperation to stay alive. After all, war is not a game, especially one such as the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and left its survivors haunted by a multitude of atrocious events. Terry Erickson’s father and George Robinson, who were two fictional characters from the short stories “Stop the Sun” and “Dear America”, respectively, were veterans of the Vietnam War. The differences and similarities between Terry’s father and George Robinson are striking, and they merit rigorous scrutiny.

The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.

In June of 1968 O’Brien was drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, a war he didn’t believe in. In his personal battle the war becomes his nemesis. This enemy causes him to crack and to suffer much turmoil. “The emotions went from outrage to terror to bewilderment to guilt to sorrow and then back again to outrage. I felt a sickness inside me. Real disease” (O’Brien 780). In these few short sentences you can feel the mood of the story which is fear, despair, anger, anguish, and bewilderment.

O’Brien was a Vietnam War soldier that experienced the horrors of war first-hand, reliving the moments of the battlefield in the war as well as at home. The “things they carried” were not just their war equipment, but also the emotional and psychological baggage that they had. This emotional baggage weighs in on their conscience and disturbs the peace in their dreams. O’Brien states that “a true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models for proper human behavior”(O’Brien 65). Throughout the book O’Brien puts an effort into exposing the reality of what a “true war story” sounds like. He remarks that any story that makes “you feel uplifted” is a complete falsehood and claims that “you have been made the victim of very old and terrible lie”(O’Brien 65).

In the chapter “How to tell a true war story” the author Tim O’Brien explains why war stories are complicated to tell and why they are so important to understand what the men actually went through. In order to make his point O’Brien uses the example of how a fellow soldier died and what occurred when the soldiers best friend and fellow soldier wrote to the dead man’s sister. O’Brien explains how each of the men experienced the death of the friend and how each point of view creates a blurred line between what happened and what felt like it happened. The story wraps up by describing the pain the soldier’s friend goes through and how he brutally takes it out on a young buffalo.

Many people can’t handle the truth, they fear it. I agree with Plato that the truth is something that is always objective. Tim O’Brien would think that one person’s truth from their experiences isn’t always another person’s truth, it is subjective. Plato and O’Brien have differing opinions about truth and how to deal with fear.

O'Brien was drafted into the army during the Vietnam War. He is telling several stories in different points of views, of things that happened to him and his buddies while at war and on how you or someone else might believe or not believe a true war story. He tells about how his friend dies in three different views. How his friend dies and it looks beautiful, somewhat how is happened and then the true war story. He also tells little stories within the whole Story.

In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story” a story is told by Mitchell Sanders and how six guys had a mission they were sent on. The mission was supposed to be them sitting a week out in a dug out area so they can listen for enemy movements. When they get up there it had a spooky feeling to it because of the mist just hanging on the mountain top to the point where you couldn’t see past five feet. The guys stayed up there because they had to and it was their mission. They heard things up there but it was never clear whether it was their minds doing it to them or the entire country of Vietnam actually talking to them. But the thing was that all six of them heard the same noises up there and it was driving them crazy because it never stopped

War can be defined as “an active struggle between competing entities. It’s truly hard to tell who is right or wrong during a war. Both sides are fighting for what they believe in and what is true to their heart. In the end there is always two things promised – destruction and death. These two objects can explain the result in every facet of war from the physical to emotional.

     According to the author Tim O’Brien, people tend to readily accept the ‘facts’ presented of what happened during a war. People do not consider the existence of fallacies regarding the actual stories of what happens in wars, few consider that the ‘facts’ of an incident often change through people’s words. The film ‘Saving the Private Ryan’ by Steven Spielberg features both facts and seemingness part of the war story. Since it is so difficult to fully describe a war using human language, Spielberg ended up revising his stories to make sense out of it. Spielberg included parts that did not occur or exclude parts that did occur in order to make their stories seem more credible. According

Tim O’Brien tells the story of him and his platoon in Vietnam as well as a little about what each had experienced before and after the war. He tells each story in different way to elaborate on different things that happened around the same time. This complicated method emphasizes how he and each of his platoon member felt together while in Nam.It may jump from tale to tale in the stroy, but it has a clear message. In the story The Things They Carried O’Brien explains in different ways about being away from home can cause dramatic changes to someone in an alienating or a beneficial way.