“A True War Story Is Never About War”

Chen Piao (Christine)

Dr. Marquardt

ENG 2403

March 9, 2015

Word Count: 598

“A True War Story Is Never About War”

          There were big amount of writers writing about war, about experience in the battlefield, about how people suffered from the war. Tim O’Brien is a writer who had been a soldier in Vietnam. Different from many other writers, his true war story is never about war. How to Tell a True War Story is one of his famous works. He shows his own understandings about war, and also war stories.

          A friend of Rat, Lemon gets killed. Rat writes a long letter to the guy’s sister, telling her how great the guy is. But the sister never writes back, which makes Rat really angry and crazy. What happened is that Rat and Lemon were playing with smoke grenades, and Lemon was thrown out by accident and died. Then they cleaned his remains peacefully, even with singing. Tim O’Brien describes the scene that Lemon was thrown out in very detailed, alternating it with other small stories. The second story is heard from another person. A six-man patrol goes up into the mountains and listens for enemy movement stealthily for a week. It is really spooky that they gradually heard impossible voices, such as party and music. It seems that every grass and every tree is talking. Afterwards they cannot withstand that feelings and order up the firepower to burn the whole mountain. The third story is that after Lemon died, Rat met a small water buffalo. He used a gun to torment it cruelly. It just kept struggling but did not die. It was really amazing.

          A true war story is never about true experience. How to Tell a True War Story looks disordered and confusing, because stories are alternated with each other, and we can never find out which part is true and which part is fictitious. In fact, making readers confused is one of Tim O’Brien’s goals. He uses the first-person observant as a spectator and also a narrator in the main story, which contributes to the authenticity of the story. And the especially detailed process, such as how he observed the Lemon’s death and what the patrol heard in the mountain, also does. It seems to be true, but no one can ensure that it is exactly true. There are also some parts of the story adding to the untruth. For instance, when Lemon died, the atmosphere is so peaceful, even with singing. When Sanders, the narrator of the story of the patrol, came up and said that he had made up something about what the patrol heard, the writer said he knew. Actually no one knows what the patrol really heard. Or the patrol may even never exist. It seems to be fictitious, but also, no one can ensure that it is exactly fictitious.

“Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.” In fact, the authenticity of a story is not so important. What matters is that whether the readers can truly feel the war. Even if the whole story is fictitious, as long as the readers feel the war, the feelings are true. “A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.”

The opposite sides of things always stay with each other. A war not only contains cruelty, death and sorrow. There also exist the aliveness and hope. The aliveness and hope can never ever be so strong, when it follows the death. It is exactly the great contrast that makes the hope stronger. Therefore, in a true war story, nothing is ever very true, and nothing is ever very fictitious. “A true war story is never about war.”