Telling A True War Story Analysis

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

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

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

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

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.

During the Vietnam War, the platoon came into a sewage field and were ambushed by mortar fire. Kiowa got hit by one and Norman Bowker attempted to save him, but he lost him. After the war Norman Bowker was never able to live in peace. He never had a stable life after the war. At the time he lived with his family and took part time jobs that lasted very shortly. The things he cared are now gone such as his childhood friend who drowned at a young age and his ex-girlfriend who is already married. Due to so much loss, Norman Bowker has little purpose in his life. He would take his family car and drive around the lake several times. He also wanted to speak to someone about his story during the Vietnam War such as his father but never had the courage to. Norman also requested O’Brien in a letter to add his story to his work. After three years later from 1975 he ended his life silently and without any

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.

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?

In the two chapters, Speaking Of Courage and Notes, the story is mostly about shit. The chapter Notes tells us the story from O’Brien’s point of view looking back In both chapters, we see how Norman Bowker is upset with life. He believes that he is stuck in the shit

     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

In the chapter "Speaking of Courage" Norman Bowker claims that he is responsible for his friend's death. However, in the chapter "In the Field" O'Brien places the blame on an unnamed young soldier who started the enemy attack by turning on his flashlight. Which story is true? Does it matter what is true? According to Jim Neilson, the story of Kiowa's death "evokes the notion that for the U.S. Vietnam was a quagmire; his drowning functions almost emblematically to suggest America's deepening entanglement in southeast Asia" (193). Whatever the meaning behind Kiowa's story, it certainly fits the requirements for a good war story: there is nothing redeemable in it. Maria Bonn sees the three stories about Kiowa's death ("Speaking of Courage," "Notes," and "In the Field") as exemplifying "O'Brien's relentless investigation of how to tell a true war story" (paragraph 39). When you look at all three of these chapters together you can see the progression from what is imagined to what is true or is it the other way around? With Tim O'Brien, it is never clear.

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 men who were in Tim O’Brien’s platoon caught on quickly, if they talked about everything that was going on as if it was only a story, their lives became a little easier. It became easier even for the men who didn’t practically like the guy who died. In the war it wasn’t about liking one another, that didn’t matter, what mattered to them was expressing their grief without showing it. “In any case, it’s easy to get sentimental about the dead, and to guard against it” (82). Being able to guard against their grief was something that was hard for many. No matter how many stories they told, there was still a sadness that some of them never could get over. The death of Kiowa was one of those impossible to get over. His death impacted everyone in the platoon. Even though Kiowa was just their guide, they treated him like he was a part of their family of misfits. Every man in the platoon had a story for Kiowa. There was some who told people stories that had Kiowa never dying, there were two however where his death left such a huge impact on them. All they

''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 things men have always done. Why is it so hard to tell a war story? The answer to that will be there is never a moral. There is really nothing to say about a true war story, beside probably ''oh''. A war story does not indulge in abstraction or analysis. If a war story is true your stomach will make you believe. It is almost impossible to tell a true war story

There are so many different topics in the world that can make someone lose track of all time. For example, that topic for me would be history, well mainly World War II. Since around tenth grad I believe was the first time that I encountered that topic, the year after I took a college course at my school Western Civ. That class was mainly about the western world and how certain cities were developed and how certain countries failed. I’m not a hundred percent sure on why I find World War II so fascinating, it might be because I always wanted to know why a person could do the things that Adolf Hitler did. Which leads me to my second topic, that ties in with history, the brain (Psychology). I’ve never considered them to be two different topics