Traditional Sequences In Enemies And Friends By Tim OBrien

As stated in the thesis, Timothy O’Brien also writes his short story, “How to tell a True War Story,” in the first person narrative, although the style in which he narrates is quite different than from the style in “A & P.’’ O’Brien, who was an actual soldier in the Vietnam War takes on more of an autobiographical approach to telling his “true war story.”

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

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.

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

     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’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

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

While on the other hand, Jensen let Strunk live, which did not follow through with their agreement. Either choice that Jensen could’ve made he takes all the blame. This proves how even though Jensen should be mourning the death of his friend; his first thought was that Strunk would’ve ended up dead either way. This, in Dave Jensen’s eyes, verifies that he did not make the wrong choice. O’Brien quickly jumps to Strunk’s death in this paragraph. At first, he describes Strunk being taken away by the helicopter and then straight after, this quote was written. Throughout this novel, O’Brien’s usage of language and his own style are concise and clear. He quickly jumps to Strunk’s death because there was nothing else left to be said. The most important message to get across to the reader is the sense of guilt that

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

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.

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

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.

Writing stories helped O'Brien during the war. They helped him get through the painful and unknown experience that he was not used to before the war. O'Brien says during the war, he picked up multiple bodies and “lifted and dumped [them] into a truck”, but with the stories he made “ the dead sometimes smile