Metatextuality In How To Tell A True War Story By O Brien

1. According to O'Brien, how do you tell a true war story? What does he mean when he says that true war stories are never about war? In what sense is a “true” war story actually true? That is, in O’Brien’s terms, what is the relationship between historical truth and fictional truth?

O’Brien’s unification of fact and fiction is to illustrate the idea in which the real accuracy of a war story is less significant than storytelling. The subjective truth about what the war meant and what it did to change the soldiers is more meaningful than the technical details of the

his frustration at not quite getting the details right, not quite pinning down the final and definitive truth.” (Pg. 72). When Sanders tells O’Brien about how he made up those parts, “Last night , man, I had to make up a few things. ‘Yeah, but listen, it’s still true. Those six guys, they heard wicked sound out there. They heard sound you just plain won’t believe.” (Pg. 73). Sanders explains to O’Brien that these sounds they heard were sounds unbelievable and had to be replaced with the Opera, choir boys, glee club, and so on. Without these small lies there is no truth or even a moral, especially in a true war story a moral is hidden deep within a war story something you have to dig for within a deeper meaning. Like when O’Brien asks what is the moral to his story and Sanders doesn’t give him a straight answer, well more of a shrouded answer. “All right, what’s the moral?’ ‘Forget it.’ ‘No go ahead.’ … ‘Hear that quiet, man? That quiet - just listen. There’s your moral.” (Pg. 74). Since a true war story doesn’t have a clear moral, it’s something much deeper and is lost within the retelling of the story. When Sanders says that the quietness is the moral, he means that in life there is always quietness, but if you listen hard enough then you’ll hear what life is trying to tell

O’Brien knows this. He does not shy away from long, thoughtful passages that explain the basic realities of battlefield life. Look at In the Field, when Jimmy Cross tries to think of what precisely caused Kiowa’s death. “You could blame the war. You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going into it... In the field, though, the causes were immediate. A moment of carelessness or bad judgment or plain stupidity carried consequences that lasted forever” (O’Brien 169). This passage articulates the immediacy and constant danger of war. Every moment, every river or rainstorm could mean death. That is what Lamott might call “meat-and-potato truth” to the soldiers. A concept so poignant can easily transcend words, and if O’Brien had had any reluctance to delve so deeply into how the Lieutenant thinks, it could have been lost in translation. Only through O’Brien’s intimate musing comes a shadow of enormous reality, the “meat-and-potato

However, as the reader is to realize soon, by having his fictional characters tell stories and then recant the truth of those stories, O’Brien certainly calls into question the possibility of ever telling a true war story. The result of

The first three words of the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story” are, “This is true” (67). Although Tim O’Brien begins this chapter with such a bold and clear statement, throughout the chapter he has the reader thinking and confused when he contradicts himself by stating things such as, “In many cases a true war story cannot

Telling a war story will be changed for everyone depending on their experience and the different wars they been to. In The Thing They Carried telling a true war story is different because O’Brien says that it needs to be a heroic and noble and very specific “In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seems to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed” (pg.67-68) it shows how O’Brien wants to impress the audience with his stories that makes one wonder if it is real or not. He wants to sound heroic which makes part of the purpose of the story, his side

"The difference between fairy tales and war stories is that fairy tales begin with 'Once upon a time,' while war stories begin with 'Shit, I was there!'" (Lomperis 41). How does one tell a good war story? Is it important to be accurate to the events that took place? Does the reader need to trust the narrator? In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien examines what it takes to tell a good war story. He uses his own experiences in Vietnam in conjunction with his imagination to weave together a series of short stories into a novel.

O'Brien's writing style is so vivid, the reader frequently finds himself accepting the events and details of this novel as absolute fact. To contrast truth and fiction, the author inserts reminders that the stories are not fact, but are mere representations of human emotion incommunicable as fact.

The exaggeration that O'Brien expresses in his story, also known as hyperbole, gives the reader a feeling of speaking with a man that just experienced the war of his life an hour before you two are speaking. The emotion is

Throughout Tim O'Brien's short work "How to tell a true war story" O'Brien has two reoccurring themes. One is of the desensitization of the troops during their hardship regarding the events of the Vietnam War, and the other is of the concept of truth. Truth may seem simple enough to explain, but is in fact endowed with many layers. The story is chalked full of contradictions, as well as lies, and embellishments, and yet O'Brien claims that these are the truth. The truth, whether it be war or society's, is in fact a concept that can be conveyed many times and in many ways. Whereas each is independently untrue, the combined collaboration of these half-truths is in essence the only real truth.

Tim O’Brien uses two narrative techniques in “How to Tell a True War Story”. First he splits the story into three different sections. The first part being Rat Kiley writing his letter to Curt Lemon’s sister about the relationship they had. The next section is describing the correct way of writing a “true war story”. And the last is O’Brien looking back on stories and his story telling techniques. O’Brien separates the story into three different parts to give the reader an example of a story that is “true”. The next section would about the truth about writing a true story and the last section is his personal reflection on the whole situation. The other narrative technique is that O’Brien retells certain events. He retells how Curt Lemon died, he retells Mitchell Sanders telling a story, and he retells how women react when you tell them stories about the war. Tim O’Brien retells stories and

O’Brien casts doubt on the veracity of the story to let you experience what the war felt like for him. When him and his fellow soldiers would sit around the campfire telling stories some where obviously made up for entertainment while others actually were authentic. This is how you have to view the book as like you are there with the troops listening to these war stories and deciding for yourself whether or not you believe them. The underlying theme isn’t really the vietnam war in itself, its the act of storytelling.

     In “How to Tell a True War Story” O’Brien explores the relationship between the events during a war and the art of telling those events. O’Brien doesn’t come to a conclusion on what is a true war story. He writes that one can’t generalize the story as well. According to O’Brien, war can be anything from love and beauty to the most horrid

     O’Brien states that although the normal parts of the story are what seems to happen during the war, and it is quite different from what has really happened but those two cannot be separated. Spielberg also includes normal scenes and seemingness scenes on his movie, which cannot be separated. O’Brien asserts, “What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed.”(O’Brien 78) Basically, he is saying that people tend to believe whatever the narrator includes in the story even though it is not true. The scenes at the church from the movie can be true but most likely; Spielberg made it up that part. Because no one was there to observe the truth, he had to come