In the text, “How to Tell a True War Story” Tim O’Brien expresses his thoughts about the true war story and how the war story is changed according to the person who tells it. Jon Krakauer illustrates Chris McCandless’s journey into the Alaskan wilderness and reasons for McCandless’s gruesome death in an isolated place, in his book “Into the Wild.” O’Brien relates introspection and a soldier’s war story by saying that the war story portrays the feelings of a soldier. A soldier’s war story is not the exact war story; it is the illustration of that particular soldier’s perception. Narrating a war story is not like inundating others with facts and numbers however, it is about the introspection of a soldier, because that soldier determines what and how to tell the war story. While he tells the war story, he questions his thoughts and feelings. O’Brien explains that when soldiers ponder the external environment they will contemplate their inner thoughts. Krakauer not only elaborates the journey of McCandless but also expresses his experience of traveling to the Alaskan wilderness. This vicarious act of Krakauer ponders the inner thoughts of McCandless. McCandless embarked the journey to detach himself from the social world in order to explore more about him. Both Krakauer and O’Brien analyze about feelings of individuals who were separated from their comfort zones. Introspection is the practice of self-observing one’s thoughts and feelings. When a person analyzes experiences of another person it just gives peripheral thoughts about that person and about the experience. Although it does not enlighten the complete idea, introspection of that experience gives a clearer perspective of that experience.
A person’s experience has a prof...
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...ue war story is a way of introspection. Questioning about the war story and finding the components it has, provide more meaning to the true war story rather than accepting as it is. Through his journey to the Alaskan wilderness, Krakauer discovers more about McCandless. Krakauer constructs some ideas about McCandless from the information he gathered. Although the exact meaning of McCandless journey as well as the true war story is impenetrable, introspection gives main ideas about them and clears the ambiguities. O’Brien and Krakauer use the introspection as a tool and dismantle the obscure part of these experiences.
Works Cited
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York: Anchor- Doubleday, 1997.
O’Brien, Tim. “How To Tell a True War Story.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2003. p. 420-429.
In the story “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, the reader is enlightened about a boy who was mentally and emotionally drained from the horrifying experiences of war. The father in the story knows exactly what the boy is going through, but he cannot help him, because everyone encounters his or her own recollection of war. “When their faces are contorted from sucking the cigarette, there is an unmistakable shadow of vulnerability and fear of living. That gesture and stance are more eloquent than the blood and guts war stories men spew over their beers” (Zabytko 492). The father, as a young man, was forced to reenact some of the same obligations, yet the father has learne...
Many times readers lose interest in stories that they feel are not authentic. In addition, readers feel that fictitious novels and stories are for children and lack depth. Tim O’ Brien maintains that keeping readers of fiction entertained is a most daunting task, “The problem with unsuccessful stories is usually simple: they are boring, a consequence of the failure of imagination- to vividly imagine and to vividly render extraordinary human events, or sequences of events, is the hard-lifting, heavy-duty, day-by-day, unending labor of a fiction writer” (Tim O’ Brien 623). Tim O’ Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” examines the correlation between the real experiences of war and the art of storytelling. In O’Brien’s attempt to bridge the gap between fiction and non-fiction the narrator of the story uses language and acts of violence that may be offensive to some. However some readers agree that Tim O" Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story" would lack authenticity and power without the use of crude language and violence.
When telling a story details can be difficult to remember. Sometimes what happened can’t be pinpointed exactly. The lines between what is fact and fiction can easily become blurred. The short story “How to Tell a True War Story” tells of the difficulties of telling a true war story along with examples of true stories that are hard to believe. “In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.” ("How to Tell a True War Story.”).
Tim O’Brien’s ultimate purpose is to detract the fine line between fiction and reality. In order to fully grasp what a true war story consists of, the definition of true must be deciphered. O’Brien seems to believe that it does not need to be pure facts. Instead, it is mostly found in the imagination of the individual. Readers need to receive a story based on the truth in its overall purpose and meaning. It just needs to feel true. The author implies that it is not important whether the event actually occurred or not, because if the reader wants to believe it that badly, the feeling of truth will always be present.
King, Rosemary. "O'Brien's 'How to Tell a True War Story.'" The Explicator. 57.3 (1999): 182. Expanded Academic ASAP.
An article called, “The Real War,” written by Roger J. Spiller, begins with a quote by Walt Whitman, “The real war will never get in the books.” The author writes about an interview with Paul Fussell, who was a soldier in World War Two and has written many books about World War One and World War Two. Fussell is very opinionated and critical about other books written about these wars, asserting they are not realistic or portray the true essence of what really occurred by soldiers and other people participating in the wars. I claim that it is impossible to convey the actual personal feelings and emotions of those involved in a war in books or any other forms of media.
During times of war, man is exposed to the most gruesome aspects of life such as death, starvation, and imprisonment. In some cases, the aftermath is even more disastrous, causing posttraumatic stress disorder, constant guilt, as well as physical and mental scarring, but these struggles are not the only things that humans can take away from the experience. War can bring out the appreciation of the little things in life, such as the safety people take for granted, the beauty of nature, and the kindness of others. These universal consequences of fighting all contribute to what war is really capable of doing, sometimes bringing out the best and worst in people, and constantly shaping society. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien goes through this himself when he writes about setting up base camp in the Vietnamese pagoda, the return to site of Kiowa’s death, the story about the old poppa-san guide, and Mitchell Sanders’ “moment of peace”. When O’Brien includes these stories, it is not to insert joy into a tragedy, but rather to create a more wholesome and authentic feel into a tough, realistic war story. O’Brien’s’ “sweet” stories are there to show the hope he had during war, and also serve as a universal example that even in the darkest tunnels, it is always possible to find rays of light.
The novel The Thing They Carried is a compilation of short stories that share underlying themes and characters. One of the stories is called “How to tell a True War Story”. In this story the narrator expands on a central theme of the distinction between truth and fiction when writing a war story. The story, like most of the other stories in the novel jumps erratically between events, which oftentimes creates confusion and a sense of the surreal in the story. Throughout the story the narrator repeatedly shows that when writing a war story the “story truth is truer sometimes than happening truth.”(O’Brien pg. 171) This quotation encompasses the theme and supports it. The narrator’s use of stylistic devices coupled with stories such as “How to Tell a True War Story” and “Good Form” exemplifies how fiction can fully represent the truth whilst the facts fall miserably short.
...n amnesiac nation into “working through” its troubled past.” (Bly ,189) Story telling was the soldier’s salvation, their survival method. Being able to tell their stories let them express everything they were feeling and ultimately cope with the horrors of war and the guilt the carried.
King, Rosemary. "O'Brien's 'How to Tell a True War Story.'" The Explicator. 57.3 (1999): 182. Expanded Academic ASAP.
O'Brien, Tim. "How to Tell a True War Story." Writing as Re-Vision. Eds. Beth Alvarado and Barbara Cully. Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster Custom Publishing, 1996. 550-8.
To write a true war story that causes the readers to feel the way the author felt during the war, one must utilize happening-truth as well as story-truth. The chapter “Good Form” begins with Tim O’Brien telling the audience that he’s forty-three years old, and he was once a soldier in the Vietnam War. He continues by informing the readers that everything else within The Things They Carried is made up, but immediately after this declaration he tells the readers that even that statement is false. As the chapter continues O’Brien further describes the difference between happening-truth and story-truth and why he chooses to utilize story-truth throughout the novel. He utilizes logical, ethical, and emotional appeals throughout the novel to demonstrate the importance of each type of truth. By focusing on the use of emotional appeals, O’Brien highlights the differences between story-truth and happening-truth and how story-truth can be more important and truer than the happening-truth.
Several stories into the novel, in the section, “How to tell a true war story”, O’Brien begins to warn readers of the lies and exaggerations that may occur when veterans tell war stories.
The truth to any war does not lie in the depths of storytelling but rather it’s embedded in every person involved. According to O’Brien, “A true war story does not depend on that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (pg. 80). Truths of any war story in my own opinion cannot be fully conveyed or explained through the use of words. Any and all war stories provide specific or certain facts about war but each of them do not and cannot allow the audience to fully grasp the tru...
“It’s time to be blunt… I want you to feel what I felt” (O’Brien 171). There are two sides to every war and throughout the novel The Things They Carried, the author Tim O’Brien creates a war in the reader’s mind centered on trust. O’Brien forces the reader to realize the impact of a true war story where, instead of giving an accurate account, he blurs the lines about the importance of trust and gives an emotionally driven anecdote. The author establishes ethos in a unique way by impacting the credibility of a story rarely with facts and forcing the reader to focus on what is more important to him: evoking emotion. These emotions envelop the entirety of Tim O 'Brien 's short stories, showing his clear intentions to make the reader feel what