How to Interpret a True War Story
The theme to Tim O'Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story" is that no war story holds absolute truth though told to be true, for there is no point to the Vietnam War and thus no point to a story of the Vietnam War. You cannot help but come to this conclusion through the repetitive manner in which O'Brien pounds these thoughts into your head. O'Brien presents the idea that one cannot generalize about war because generalizations bring no emotion and serve no purpose. We are warned that: "In many cases a
" It is ironic that we are told to be wary of war stories because they hold little factual truth and yet we are expected to believe all the stories that he tells us if not for the facts then for the entertainment element. "Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn't hit you until twenty years later", states the narrator. 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. However, when the story was finished, even Sanders was "[frustrated] at not getting the details right" leaving more than enough room for error, and then later adding details that he somehow missed. O'Brien states that: "In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a true war story nothing much is ever true". With so much contradiction and confusion with the meaning of a true war story the reader can be led into thinking, "what is the point?" and this is exactly what I thought. When Mitchell Sanders tells the narrator about the story of the sounds that soldiers heard while lying silent in the brush we hear it with so much vivid detail that we never doubt it's truth even though we were warned early on. So maybe I will get the point twenty years from now. ------------------------------------------------------------------------**Bibliography**.
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