Explain Why Is It So Hard To Tell A True War Story

Throughout the chapter of “How To Tell A True War Story” the reader is conflicted due to the author’s writing style. Through O’Brien’s writing in the book, the reader is left to ponder between what the author says is true vs what the actual truth is. He writes, “In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes it own happening and has to be told that way,” (O’Brien 71). Tim O'Brien generally tells the reader that in war stories it is difficult to split apart the truth and what the truth seemed like. Therefore, the stories then become what may have seemed to happen because the truth gets mixed in. At the end of the chapter O’Brien says, “All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up

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

Throughout the book, O’Brien repeatedly states his struggles in telling “a true war story.” One of the obstacle he faces in telling “a true war story” is the readers’ misconception that “truth” must be an event and not an emotion. To begin, O’Brien claims “A true war story is never moral… If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted… then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie… you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (68-69) and “All of us… like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth” (38). In these two statements, O’Brien has shown us that people want not a

| A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. (pg. 65)

Joseph Plumb Martin was born on November 1760 in western Massachusetts. He wrote a book in which he described the life of an ordinary soldier during the American Revolution.”A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier” not only informed about the poor conditions in which the troops lived but also is one of the few soldier's accounts of the Revolution in general.

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

     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

August 6th, 1945. It was just an ordinary day. I woke up early this morning to help a friend move some things. Everything was well until I saw the light. I plunged myself between two large rocks, no questions asked. When I was able to get a glackr of what has happened I saw nothing but destroyed homes and dust. I’ve never seen so much blood, it was unbearable. A lady and her injured boy came my way and I couldn't help but help them and take them to a shelter to get help. As I looked over the city, a thick black smoke filled the air. Then the thought hit me, what about my family? Immediately after I ran to search for my family. On the way to search for them I began to feel guilty. How could all these people be hurt, injured or even dead,

Some were true while some were just to portray heroism and were filled with false facts. The story “How to Tell a True War story” written by Tim O’Brien illustrates the difference between true and fictional war sorties. To show this O’Brien used two different stories and compared them. In both the stories, the common theme is that war brings melancholy and pain to everyone. The first story was about two friends Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley. Curt Lemmon accidently dies by stepping on a barbed wire. The second story was about a military troop which was sent to check the enemy movements. Both the stories are based on real war situations. The book was published after the Vietnam

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

     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

First, the reader must understand just what makes a good "war story". The protagonist of the novel, Tim O'Brien, gives us his

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,

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.

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