My teacher told the class that each student had to write what we thought a true war story was. As I sat down in my seat, my pencil started writing for its self. In my fight paragraph I wrote "The darkness exists within the hurting soul I call mine, A darkness that will take too many years to delete. This is s darkness that is filled with a ton of pain and a ton of anger. A darkness that I'm sad to say will always remains the same. I weep out for support to the finding of no one that understands, I extend out but come back with empty hands. I try so hard to describe, but find that I can't, For the darkness has surrounded me and where the bright light is only a desire, a vanishing dot." My description of a true war story isn't always about a …show more content…
Why is this so, I can't say. All I know is how I'm feeling on this day. I want people to understand and accept that light and love are not apart of my world. Never have I known of these things, never have I even known of these things even when I was a small child. Shaking in fear when I am given kindness, For I don't know what I'm expected to be. I know inside that I am capable to love with no hesitations, I also know that I can forgive without no presumptions. This right here are the things I know without a fear or doubt in my heart, this is the things I want People to hear and know. Nonetheless I battle with myself, the fight inside. There are too many things that I keep inside and hide. My feelings that I have trouble making clear or explaining, My feelings of sadness, terror and …show more content…
Please, take the time, to listen, and help me. I need someone to help me to see that people really love me and will be there when needed. Believe Me, I do care and I do love. I just need understanding and care, someone to help me to better understand how to share and communicate, please assist me to become an entire person inside because I'm in pieces, I need help to face all of the things that I hide from. For a person to be there for me, that's all I ask of, with all the love they can provide and all the tender care, I would need you to be forbearing, and just please help me. This is a heavy load I carry with me. For someone to help me conquer all this and then to also help me to prevail over and make me strong enough to win this battle I'm fighting within. My teacher was impressed with my paper and gave me an A. I used my perspective of a true war story and wrote what thought one
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.
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.
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.
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...
According to the Indian Times, madness is the rule in warfare (Hebert). The madness causes a person to struggle with experiences while in the war. In “How to Tell a True War Story”, the madness of the war caused the soldiers to react to certain situations within the environment differently. Tim O’Brien’s goal with the story “How to Tell a True War Story” is to shed light on the madness the soldiers face while in the war. Tim O’Brien tells the true story of Rat experiences of the war changing his life.
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.
...is painful, but without direct experience, these values hold incomplete meaning. A writer’s job is to color in the holes—to paint an entire picture of the immense, excruciating pain war inflicts. Beyond monotonous explanation, a writer produces engaging moving pictures which arouse all the senses. Once keenly aware of seemingly indescribable suffering, an audience may evaluate the purpose and significance of war’s pains. A writer latches onto an audience’s change in perception to introduce his or her own viewpoint. Powerful description not only reproduces an immersive experience but also communicates and encourages the development of new ideas.
The theme of this war story is very much applicable in real life as it was in the story. These three characters in the this story realize the hard way how warfare and violence can shape a person’s perspective on life. Each character experience death first hand through the deaths of their comrades and realize how important that life is. This is what Tim O’Brien’s character realizes from his experience during Vietnam that you cannot control the things that happen, like being drafted to a war you do not support, but you just have to go as life takes you and make the most out of the situation as much as you can. “And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It’s about sunlight. it’s about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things ou are afraid to do. it’s about love and memory. It’s about
When O'Brien says that a true war story is not about war he means that a war story is not about death, fighting or war, it is about the soldiers grim experiences. O’Brien writes “A true war story in never about war… It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow” (62). The quote demonstrates that O'Brien's definition of a war story does not describe what happens but it describes the feelings and emotions that were felt because of what happened. A true war story does not focus on what happened but it should focus on the pain that the soldiers felt.
War as seen through the eyes of Ambrose Bierce in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge depicts it as truly gritty. The author successfully sends a message of how death is a part of war, and it is not as noble or glorious as one would think it is. Due to popular media, we have this attitude that the protagonist is going to go down in a blaze of glory, and while it may be true for some, it is not like that for everyone. War is rough, dark, and gritty but no one ever wants to talk about those parts of war because it would ruin the fantasy of it.
...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam War.
The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the devoted awareness of those who fantasize war and the memories that support it.
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.
... war, but: “Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story.” (O’Brien 233). The stories by the veterans of war, struggle with their own mental illnesses in their stories of fiction. Both stories are about their reflection of the war they served in.
In the past one hundred years, war has greatly influenced the dark themes that have emerged in storytelling, as well as how an author executes their story’s tone, style, structure. Ever since the world was first exposed to war on a large scale in the 20th century, it has impacted many, especially the soldiers involved. Some of these soldiers, like Kurt Vonnegut and Ernest Hemingway, went on to become war writers. Even though their view of war contrasts, it is also similar in some aspects. Hemingway and Vonnegut both agree that war is atrocious in all ways. An HBO Documentary called Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq supports this belief as well, even though the time span of Hemingway and Vonnegut’s works are at most one hundred years before