StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

A reader and How to Tell a True War Story - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
“How to Tell a True War Story” explores the complex relationship between the war encounter and how one narrates about the war experiences.The author,as the narrator and protagonist of the story – O’Brien’s role as a soldier tells several different stories,which intermingle with each other– Curt Lemon. …
Download free paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER95.5% of users find it useful
A reader and How to Tell a True War Story
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "A reader and How to Tell a True War Story"

Two stories that changed my perceptions as a reader “How to Tell a True War Story” explores the complex relationship between the war encounter and how one narrates about the war experiences. The author, as the narrator and protagonist of the story – O’Brien’s role as a soldier tells several different stories, which intermingle with each other, the main theme being the death of another soldier – Curt Lemon. The place of the narration is the Vietnam War. The narrator had returned from the war about 20 years ago and his character is disillusioned. Throughout of the discourse of the story he is trying to illustrate this. The narrator attempts to formulate what is true what is not and surrounds his storytelling with philosophical commentaries and list of “dos and don’ts”. The reader is sometimes perplexed by the contrast whether to believe or not to believe a war story. The way that O’Brien’s character tells the story shows us that the narrator has the power to construct his listeners’ opinions through the techniques of a good storyteller. The narrators goal on telling his story is to provide the reader with real and unreal examples how war distorts the soldier’s perceptions and his values of right and wrong. The O’Brien’s character achieves this through repeating the opposition “true – untrue”. The chapter begins with “This is true (O’Brien 67).” Then the narrator expresses some skeptical views in: “In many cases a true war story cannot be believed (O’Brien 71).” The character tries to explain how soldiers who experienced the war regardless where it happened change their perceptions of what is beautiful and what is ugly. The narrator himself questions the credibility of his own words, implying to the readers to see beyond the telling. “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness (O’Brient 71).” This is the essence of the story – a true war story does not lie in the reality of the situation, but that in a war there are no limits, no values, no moral sense, no justifications. Taft-Kaufman (2000) comments that Tim O’Brien builds up an intentional paradox and irony. This is best expressed in Curt’s sister lack of response and the way Rat reacts. Emotionally, he can not accept that this can really happen, after unleashing his feelings and heart, it is beyond human’s grasp to understand how can she not respond. “The dumb cooze never writers back (O’Brien 68).” The paradox embraces us and this letter is pointed out embarrassingly throughout the story, as a reminder that in a state of war, there is also inward war. “If there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning (O’Brien 77).” This gripping description tells is all. A true war story is not about courage and heroism, or dignity and survival. It is about the reality of misplaced feelings and the soldier’s inability to deal with their emotions, because they are exposed to horrible war experiences which change everything. O’Brien’s character portrays Curt Lemon’s death as a love story. “It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story (O’Brien 85).” In spite of the grotesque scenes and the graphic and detailed recounting of the situation how they gathered Curt’s body parts from the tree, the actual emphasize is the sunlight radiating from Curt. The focus on the sunlight speaks about the optimism, and not about the terrifying carnage. The description functions as vehicle through for the narrator which he uses to overcome the complexity of war memories that haunt him (Taft-Kaufman pp. 17-38). “True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis (O’Brien 78).” That is why the narrator’s tactic was to include several different stories and examples. After Curt’s death, the soldiers find a baby water buffalo and decide to bring it to the camp. Rat Kiley gives the baby food, but it is not hungry. Then, most shockingly, he starts to shoot the animal in various places over and over again. Rat does not want to kill the baby buffalo, but to make him suffer. As if through its suffering, he can feel his own. One of the soldiers notes: “Garden of Evil. Over here, man, every sins fresh and original (O’Brien 80).” Rats pain after Curt dies is inexplicable and immeasurable. A simple and direct statement puts as to the ground, truth is what “makes the stomach believe (O’Brien 78).” The image of the torturing buffalo, contrasts with the image of the unspeakable emotions of Rat after Curt’s death. The buffalo, though young refuses to die, it fights for life – evidence that the will for life is stronger than the desire to give up. The role that the narrator’s character plays is to deliver the reader a message about life through the vivid death of Curt Lemon. It does not matter whether is story is true or not, because the beauty and pain are universal. The reader is not surprised when Rat Kiley says at the end of the story that the events did not happen. The audience is not misled, because it understood that even though the characters are described in entirely different way, this might have happened, thus we accept is as true. O’Brien challenges the reader to reread the story and to discover for himself where the truth rests. For the narrator the nature of fiction is to touch your moral grounds. As he explains, the reader can not get the moral while reading it, but the moral can fit him one night after 20 years and you may wake up his wife to share the story. But then, while trying to find the right words to make his point, he has lost it. Thus, the structure of the story tells you that the narrator is struggling to get his point across, because the war theme is elusive. One time you feel it, the next moment you can not find the words for it. Ironically, “that’s a true story that never happened (O’Brien 84).” The only conclusion we can reach is that the truth in any war story is simply irrelevant to the situation. John Barth’s story “Lost in the Funhouse” tells the story of a thirteen-year-old boy who is going on a trip to the beach with his family. The story takes place on Independence Day during World War II. The name of the thirteen-year-old boy is Ambrose and he is travelling together with his older brother Peter, their mother and father, Uncle Karl, and Magda - a fourteen- year- old neighbor girl. The narrator tells the reader that both Ambrose and his brother are attracted to Magda. What is similar between Barth’s story and O’Brien’s is that they tell a love story. Barth uses the metaphor of the funhouse the describe Ambrose’s first sexual perception. He begins the story with a rhetorical question: For whom is the funhouse fun? Perhaps for lovers. For Ambrose it is a place of fear and confusion (Barth 72).” Barth uses the funhouse as multi-layered metaphor. Piedmont-Marton (1999) comments that throughout the story the narrator will test this initial rhetoric question and hypothesis. We can say that comparing the two stories both of them explore the veracity of the posed questions: what is true, what is not. Advised that the beach is covered in oil and tar the family group decides to visit a funhouse instead. Piedmont-Marton (1999) explains that most writers employ particular techniques to enhance their writing. However, the narrator in “Lost in the Funhouse” uses “other aspects of realism, it is an illusion that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means (Barth 73).” Piedmont-Marton (1999) argues that “the funhouse poses mirrors in front of mirrors, tempting the viewer to mistake image for substance, ‘‘Lost in the Funhouse’’ seduces readers into believing the familiar literary truism that sex is a metaphor for language (Piedmont-Marton 179).” The mirror’s reflection is a symbol for the subconscious behavior and realization of Ambrose. In order to reach for his inner feelings he has to see himself in all shapes and sizes. This theme to an extent is similar to O’Brien’s shooting of the baby buffalo. In order to Rat to realize his hidden emotions, he has to cross the boundary between conscious and unconscious. The image of the mirror and the image of the baby buffalo are one and the same. What Ambrose witnesses is the “youthful passion (Barth 84).” This is his first memorable, pleasant experience. In contrast with O’Brien Rat also experience for the first time the death of his fellow soldier. Unlike lover like Peter and Magda, Ambrose can not lose sight of himself, because he is constantly seeing his reflection. “In the funhouse mirror-room you can’t see yourself go on forever, because not matter how you stand, your head gets in the way (Barth 85).” Here comes again the similarity with O’Brien who questions which war stories are real and true and which are not. Barth’s problem is how to find the true self. With the mirror-imagining one can never be sure which self is the real one and which is the reflection. “You think you’re yourself, but there are other persons in you (Barth 85).” After finding the “unofficial backdoor or escape hatch opening (Barth 85)” Ambrose, ironically finds himself ironically in the mirror-room. He is surrounded by his own distorted reflections he sees “more clearly than ever, how readily he deceived himself into supposing he was a person (Barth 86).” The narrators goal on telling the story in “Lost in the Funhouse” is to describe Ambrose’s coming of age. However, the narrative is constantly interrupted by various comments and usage of literary devices. This is done rather deliberately, Barth’s narrator plays with the form of fiction and utilizes it to achieve the effects that it eventually delivers to the readers’ perceptions. “The story is a funhouse for readers, and the narrator is the same kind of ‘‘secret operator’’ that Ambrose aspires to become in the story’s last paragraph (Galens 177).” The story ends by answering the question presented at the beginning – whom is the funhouse designed for. The answer given to the reader is the affirmative that indeed the funhouse is fun for lovers. For Ambrose it turned out to be less a “place of fear and confusion” then he thought before entering there. Both stories impress with their expressive language and employed fiction devices. The similarities between them are connected with the way they try to reach the audience – with stories within the story itself. They differ in the way they actually convey their message. “Lost in the Funhouse” seems more philosophically and literary sophisticated. Whereas “How to tell a true was story” grasps our attention by its simplicity and everyday jargon. Both stories leave the reader in quest for his own emotions, reactions and perceptions. Both stories strive to release the reader’s imagination in discovering his own understanding about what happened in the stories. Works Cited: Barth, John. Lost in the Funhouse, Galens, David (ed.) Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, Inc Gale and Design and Thomson Learning, 2002. Piedmont-Marton, Elizabeth. Overview of ‘‘Lost in the Funhouse,’’ for Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 1999. O’Brien, Tim. How to tell a true war story. Taft-Kaufman, Jill. How to Tell a True War Story: The Dramaturgy and Staging of Narrative Theatre. Theatre Topics - Volume 10, Number 1, March 2000, pp. 17-38 Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“A reader and How to Tell a True War Story Essay”, n.d.)
A reader and How to Tell a True War Story Essay. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/literature/1559467-a-reader-and-how-to-tell-a-true-war-story
(A Reader and How to Tell a True War Story Essay)
A Reader and How to Tell a True War Story Essay. https://studentshare.org/literature/1559467-a-reader-and-how-to-tell-a-true-war-story.
“A Reader and How to Tell a True War Story Essay”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/literature/1559467-a-reader-and-how-to-tell-a-true-war-story.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF A reader and How to Tell a True War Story

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

As a result, the stories become epistemological tools, multidimensional windows through which the war, the world, and the way of telling a war story can be viewed from many different angles and visions.... The surface level expectation, of the readers, that the novel tells the story of a war, is fulfilled through Tim's effort to let the readers feel the immediate experience of war standing close to the battleground.... He tells the story of the war when it...
4 Pages (1000 words) Research Paper

Darrell Huff's How to Lie with Statistics

A paper "Darrell Huff's how to Lie with Statistics" reports that whether you encounter statistics at school, at work, or in advertising, you'll definitely commit to memory its simple lessons.... hellip; As reviewed by The Atlantic, how to Lie With Statistics is, “a pleasantly subversive little book, guaranteed to undermine your faith in the almighty statistic.... But suppose you wish to win an argument, shock a reader, move him into action, and sell him something....
6 Pages (1500 words) Book Report/Review

The Things They Carried By Tim O'Brien

For the character O'Brien, there is a need to tell his stories so that the past can be brought to the future and in that, bring understanding for people who are strangers to that experience.... Fiction is a story, a plot, and a creative product of a writer's mind.... First and foremost, he names the main character and narrator of the story after himself.... The character O'Brien starts the chapter “Spin” with bits of stories of his fellow soldiers that are disconnected to the continuing war....
6 Pages (1500 words) Essay

How to Tell a True War Story by OBrien, Tim

Tim O'Brien's “how to tell a true war story” interrogates the significance and plausibility of narrations that recount war experiences.... What links O'Brien's observations on the possible narrations of a true war story with Nietzsche's views is the skepticism that prevails.... hellip; Even as O'Brien brings in a war story presented from different angles in a seemingly simple narration, he deconstructs the entire concept of truth in them....
6 Pages (1500 words) Book Report/Review

The Things They Carried

One such touching story was penned by Tim O'Brien and was titled – “The Things They carried.... I want you to know why the story truth is truer sometimes than happening truth” (203).... Though various excerpts from the text can be interpreted in a way that can contribute to that truth, a specific event repeatedly mentioned through the book is taken into consideration, which is the death of Kiowa whose story is related many times to emphasize the fact of truth....
4 Pages (1000 words) Essay

Novel review on The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

The paper presents "The Screwtape Letters", a Christian novel by C.... S.... Lewis, that is written in a form of a series of letters from a senior Demon, Screwtape, to Wormwood, a Junior Tempter, and Screwtape's nephew.... … From this paper, it is clear that Wormwood's mission is to lead a human being astray and get hold of his soul....
13 Pages (3250 words) Essay

Odyssey and Gilgamesh as Two of the Foundational Classics

Indeed even as Homer tells the story of both the Greeks and the Trojans, it is clear that the Iliad is more a tableau about heroism than a morality play involving good guys and bad guys (Thomson, 85).... However, there is someone in the story of the Iliad who is more heroic if less prominent: Odysseus.... The fact that his stories have had such a long life and have been classics for so many centuries is a testament to how they evoke an amazing time and place....
7 Pages (1750 words) Essay

Story Truth and Happening Truth in the Things They Carried

As you read the first chapter, the author starts with the statement, "This is true," which is something that you ought to take great note of as you are going through the true war story text.... You will notice such intensity in certain chapters of the book, mostly the one that narrates in detail about a true war narrative.... nbsp; Therefore, Tim's perspective of telling a compelling war story involves applying "story truth.... Tim states that it is hard telling a true story, as in some cases, the war personality loses a sense of reality....
6 Pages (1500 words) Essay
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us