'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

After the Vietnam War, O’Brien wrote The Things They Carried. He does so to connect his audience to the events that happened during the war. Also, he wants people, who did not experience the effects of the war, understand how the war affects soldiers, their humanity, and what they left behind. In “How to Tell a True War Story” O’Brien’s message is to point out the events of the war, and that war stories are not always true because people have different views of how the war affected them. The whole book consisted of a plethora of metaphors, but without these other rhetorical devices O’Brien would not have been as effective in getting his point across thousands of people who read his book. Therefore, O’Brien used polysyndeton to further explain what war is, antithesis to explain why war stories are true and untrue, and repetition to ensure that his audience understand what he is trying to say.

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.

Many authors have written war stories and about the effects of war on a person. Two of these writers are Tim O'Brian and Ernest Hemingway. O'Brian wrote "How to Tell a True War Story"; and Hemingway wrote a short story called "Soldier's Home". Both of these stories illustrate to the reader just what war can do to an average person and what, during war, made the person change. The stories are alike in many respects due to the fact that both authors served time in the army; O'Brian in the Vietnam War and Hemingway in WWI. However, the stories do have differences due to the slightly different themes and also the different writing techniques of the authors.

My father Jack Lyons was a soldier in Vietnam and had experienced the war to its fullest. His tour in Vietnam started in 1965 lasted for six months. He has not told many detailed stories about his time in the war, and I 've heard that Veterans who 've experienced war first hand and understand the true meaning of it never really talk about their experiences to anyone. I think this reticent ness is a way to help them, the Veterans of the war, cope with their near death experiences. When I interviewed my dad last week for this essay, he was a little shy at first to tell me about his tour in Vietnam. We discussed in the interview about the many physical affects the soldiers encountered in the war. My father stated, "The heat and the insects were one of the major problems he and his fellow soldiers had to adjust to"(Lyons PI). The heat and insects might be a terrible thing for one to encounter, but it was not as bad as being shot at, shot, or killed in action. "US Forces were embroiled in a vicious guerilla warfare with the Viet Cong"(Wikipedia 2). The Viet Cong never really met the US Army on an open battlefield and that aspect of their fighting made them even more

As you know I am writing to you from the trenches of the western front in France. The United States of America joined this heinous war in the spring of nineteen hundred seventeen. We joined the fight because of the sinking of the Lusitania and when the German Kiaser sent the note to Mexico to convince them to put themselves against us to assure we will not go to war in Europe. That did not go through because the economic condition of Mexico is not that good enough to fight in a war with the United States.

     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

Throughout Tim O'Brien's, “How to Tell a True War Story”, the concept of truth and how one tells a “true” war story is discussed. Several factors contribute to the “truth” of the stories the soldiers told; the madness of the war, the civilians back home who didn't experience war or understand that it was hell, and the indescribable ways the soldiers felt. O'Brien explains that people willingly accept the facts of what happened during a war but, what they don’t consider is the deception of these facts that change through people’s stories. All of these factors combined caused the soldiers to react to certain situations and tell stories differently. O’Brien’s stories characterize that “truth” isn’t always a straightforward concept; and that it can be revealed in many ways. It can be the narrator’s intention, to provide the truth but the person listening might find a different truth to the story.

The short story that will be discussed, evaluated, and analyzed in this paper is a very emotionally and morally challenging short story to read. Michael Meyer, author of the college text The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, states that the author of How to Tell a True War Story, Tim O’Brien, “was drafted into the Vietnam War and received a Purple Heart” (472). His experiences from the Vietnam War have stayed with him, and he writes about them in this short story. The purpose of this literary analysis is to critically analyze this short story by explaining O’Brien’s writing techniques, by discussing his intended message and how it is displayed, by providing my own reaction,

The Vietnam War started in 1945, resulting in almost 60,000 American deaths and nearly two million Vietnamese deaths, according to Mintze. Years after combat countless Vietnam veterans suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder in every aspect of their lives (Price). Posttraumatic stress disorder is an illness that can happen to anyone who has gone through a horrifying experience. It has been documented in all forms of literature and films the brutality of the war and the side effects it came with. The history of Vietnam is quite long and winding and leaves one to question its purpose (Mintze).

The “Baby Boom” era occurred between the years of the late 1950s thru the 19970s and shaped America and its culture into the type of country it is today. It helps to understand these times to prevent history from repeating itself while better understanding how people were feeling during that time. Also, to better understand what was happening during that time by reading the literature that was written during that time period. Through Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” to Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, they reflect the cultural, economic, political, and intellectual upheavals the United States was experiencing. These stories affect your way of thinking about these times, especially the war.

turning my head again I saw Simon dive to my aid. He did not utter a

In the chapter entitled “How to Tell a True War Story,” the narrator, Tim O’Brien, lists various ways in which one can tell a “true” war story. He describes, in one instance, that one can “tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end” (72). This definition stood out to me the most as I thought that it related best to ideas O’Brien had brought up in earlier chapters. The notion that war stories appear endless is one that was also touched upon when O’brien explained: “in any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen” (67). Perhaps O’Brien relates the idea that once a story has replaced a memory, the story becomes a part of oneself, and thus never seems to end -- or at least

In his article, “what is an Initiation Story,” Mordecai Marcus gives us the following: in order for any young protagonist to consider themselves entering adulthood they must gain knowledge about themselves or the world around them. There are three different types of initiation that people can go through. The first definition of an initiation story is tentative is that a young protagonist goes through an event and doesn’t change the protagonist at all. The second level of an initiation story is when the protagonist goes through an event that changes them slightly while the third level changes the protagonist and goes into adulthood.

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.