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Tim o'brien how to tell a true war story
Tim o'brien how to tell a true war story
Tim o'brien how to tell a true war story
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A true war story blurs the line between fact and fiction, where it is neither true nor false at the same time. What is true and what is not depends on how much you believe it to be. In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story” from the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the author provides various definitions to how the validity of a war story can be judged. The entire chapter is a collection of definitions that describe the various truths to what a true war story is. Unlike O’Brien, who is a novelist and storyteller, David Finkel, the author of “The Good Soldiers”, is a journalist whose job is to report the facts. Yet in the selection that we read, chapter nine, Finkel uses the convention of storytelling, which relies heavily on the stories the combat troops tell each other or him personally. Finkel attempts to give an unbiased view of the Iraq war through the stories of the soldiers but in doing so, Finkel forfeits the use of his own experiences and his own opinions. From O’Brien’s views on what a true war story is combined with my own definitions, I believe that Finkel provides a certain truth to his war stories but not the entire truth. 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... ... middle of paper ... ...rting the truth, I believe that his delivery method fails to impress thus making the truth seem false. Finkel’s war stories rely heavily on facts, which in my own opinion make it read like a textbook rather than a story. Even though Finkel gives an unbiased report of the Iraq war, in doing so he forgoes the traditional storytelling methods and undertakes the method of reporting. Finkel provides concrete factual evidence but fails to also portray emotional truths which make it hard to believe. For any storyteller, the hardest part is getting the attention of the audience and once the attention is obtained, the next hardest thing is keeping that attention. Finkel’s texts tend to lose the audience from time to time, and according to O’Brien, if Finkel cannot make the audience believe than truth is obsolete which makes his war stories false even though they are true.
I read the book Soldier X by Don L. Wulffson that takes place during the world war II period. The main character of the book is a 16 year old German boy named Erik Brandt. Although Erik lives in Germany he is also half Russian and speaks Russian very well. Erik does not want to be a part of Hilters Nazi army during world war II but he is forced to fight on the side of the Nazis. During one battle of the war is he forced under a tank during a large scale battle with the Russians. He has no choice but to change clothes and gear with the Russian soldier and be now becomes part of the Russian army. He spends some time in the Russian army and then he gets wounded. He gets send to a Russian hospital and meets a nurse named Tamara. He falls in love with her but then one day the hospital is bombed and he has to escape with her and out of Russia. The story comes to an end with Erik and Tamara escaping Europe and making to over the Atlantic ocean to the United States to have kids and live the rest of there lives.
When the quote says “that part of the story is my own” it must mean O’Brien had taken some true details from personal stories. Could O’Brien taken true information but tried to throw the readers off to keep some privacy for the men the stories were based off? Some of the stories present within the book are completely out of the water. How could O’Brien imagine those ideas up without a base of what actually happened? I believe O’Brien switched the names of the soldiers but kept the stories. If he did the name switching it could emphasize on how the reader could focus on the ideas and situations, not the people. O’Brien would showcase how these situations can affect everyone. Another challenging aspect for me is if the stories are partly true why not honor those written about. Do the soldiers feel shame reading about their failures? O’Brien wrote his novel upon the hopes of helping his PTSD and it could have helped the veterans read and receive help. Along with help the vets it could supply the vets with the honor they
An interesting combination of recalled events and editorial commentary, the story is not set up like a traditional short story. One of the most interesting, and perhaps troubling, aspects of the construction of “How to Tell a True War Story” is O’Brien’s choice to create a fictional, first-person narrator who might just as well be the author himself. Because “How to Tell a True War Story” is told from a first-person perspective and O’Brien is an actual Vietnam veteran, a certain authenticity to this story is added. He, as the “expert” of war leads the reader through the story. Since O’Brien has experienced the actual war from a soldier’s point of view, he should be able to present the truth about war...
David W. Blight's book Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War, is an intriguing look back into the Civil War era which is very heavily studied but misunderstood according to Blight. Blight focuses on how memory shapes history Blight feels, while the Civil War accomplished it goal of abolishing slavery, it fell short of its ultimate potential to pave the way for equality. Blight attempts to prove that the Civil War does little to bring equality to blacks. This book is a composite of twelve essays which are spilt into three parts. The Preludes describe blacks during the era before the Civil War and their struggle to over come slavery and describes the causes, course and consequences of the war. Problems in Civil War memory describes black history and deals with how during and after the war Americans seemed to forget the true meaning of the war which was race. And the postludes describes some for the leaders of black society and how they are attempting to keep the memory and the real meaning of the Civil War alive and explains the purpose of studying historical memory.
The deceitful interpretation presented in "How to tell a true war story", is an example of Historicism. Today, people hear about the vietnam war through family members, friends and veterans. When people tell war stories they try to make themselves seem victorious. It makes the person listening feel as if it was all in the good of the people by killing people. O'Brian somehow justifies a point in his book by stating, "A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encouraged virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done." In actual reality more harm was done than good. People were forced off of their lands to hide in safety and the economic consequence is fatal. To derive to the point, O' Brian is saying there is no real war story if the audience feels that killing people had made a big and better consequence. To look back upon the Vietnam war it brought Vietnam to it's knees. The Americans assisted someone who asked them not to interfere and in the end there was no winner. The Americans had nothing to gain by fighting this war. The title was a contridictary of how to tell a true war story.
Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried challenges the reader to question what they are reading. In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story”, O’Brien claims that the story is true, and then continues to tell the story of Curt’s death and Rat Kiley’s struggle to cope with the loss of his best friend. As O’Brien is telling the story, he breaks up the story and adds in fragments about how the reader should challenge the validity of every war story. For example, O’Brien writes “you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (69), “in many cases a true war story cannot be believed” (71), “almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true” (81), and “a thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth (83). All of those examples are ways in which O’Brien hinted that his novel is a work of fiction, and even though the events never actually happened – their effects are much more meaningful. When O’Brien says that true war stories are never about war, he means that true war stories are about all the factors that contribute to the life of the soldiers like “love and memory” (85) rather than the actual war. Happening truth is the current time in which the story was being told, when O’Brien’s daughter asked him if he ever killed anyone, he answered no in happening truth because it has been 22 years since he was in war and he is a different person when his daughter asked him. Story truth
King, Rosemary. "O'Brien's 'How to Tell a True War Story.'" The Explicator. 57.3 (1999): 182. Expanded Academic ASAP.
In Hedges' first chapter of the book titled, "The Myth of War," he talks about how the press often shows and romanticizes certain aspects of war. In war there is a mythic reality and a sensory reality. In sensory reality, we see events for what they are. In mythic reality, we see defeats as "signposts on the road to ultimate victory" (21), Chris Hedges brings up an intriguing point that the war we are most used to seeing and hearing about (mythic war )is a war completely different than the war the soldiers and journalists experience ( sensory war), a war that hides nothing. He states, "The myth of war is essential to justify the horrible sacrifices required in war, the destruction and death of innocents. It can be formed only by denying the reality of war, by turning the lies, the manipulation, the inhumanness of war into the heroic ideal" (26). Chris Hedges tries to get the point across that in war nothing is as it seems. Through his own experiences we are a...
O’Brien gives the reader an example of a true war story when he tells of the soldier that jumped on a grenade to save his friends however the grenade took all their lives away. On page 61, O'Brien states that this is a true war story that never happened. This is a true war story because it fits his criteria about how a war story should be but the story never actually happens. This is a true war story because it is sad because shows loss despite the soldier’s effort to save his
King, Rosemary. "O'Brien's 'How to Tell a True War Story.'" The Explicator. 57.3 (1999): 182. Expanded Academic ASAP.
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.
But he goes on telling the reader that many of his stories are true. Whether anyone will really know or not, a true war story is never the full truth. A veteran of war will leave out details and gruesome facts of their experience while fighting in war. They do it either to suppress certain memories or they genuinely forgot what really happened, their story is never the full version. O’Brien, Hung, and Gwin all witnessed war first hand in Vietnam. Each man had seen different things and had been in situations that required them to risk one life to save others. The war in Vietnam had forever changed these men. However, no one will ever truly believe their story as the true
In his assessment of storytelling, O’Brien highlights the challenges of telling stories by including many tales that take place after the Vietnam War. For example, back in America, the soldier’s of Vietnam found
In “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien, Orwell’s ideas are questioned and the competition between the truth and the underlying meaning of a story is discussed. O’Brien’s story depicts that the truth isn’t always a simple concept; and that not every piece of literature or story told can follow Orwell’s list of rules (Orwell 285). The story is told through an unnamed narrator as he re-encounters memories from his past as a soldier in the Vietnam War. With his recollection of past encounters, the narrator also offers us segments of didactic explanation about what a “true war story” is and the power it has on the human body (O’Brien 65). O’Brien uses fictional literature and the narration of past experiences to raise a question; to what extent should the lack of precision, under all circumstances, be allowed? In reality, no story is ever really truthful, and even if it is, we have no proof of it. The reader never feels secure in what they are being told. The reliability of the source, the author, and the narrator are always being questioned, but the importance of a story isn’t about the truth or the accuracy in which it is told, but about the “sunlight” it carries (O’Brien 81).
This allows the reader to see what takes place rather than what is perceived. O’Brien’s main objective is to expose the subjectivity that lies within truth. To point out a specific contradiction within truth, he uses war to highlight this difference. He writes, “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty” (77). The truth has two different meanings and it all depends on who is interpreting it. One person may think one truth and another person can see the complete opposite. To go along with this ambiguity within truth he states, “Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true” (77). He once again shows that truth is up for interpretation. There is not a single, universal truth, however, there are many variations of it. As previously mentioned, O’Brien claims that he honestly admit that he has both never killed a man and has in fact killed somebody. Here he is stating that there can be completely different answers that all seem to be the truthful. Whether or not O’Brien killed someone, he felt like he did, but could answer that he didn’t. It is this discrepancy that proves that it is all relative. When it comes to telling the story it becomes “difficult difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen,” (67). This is what causes the subjectivity, the unknowingness of the situation. Since