Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong Analysis

1. According to O'Brien, how do you tell a true war story? What does he mean when he says that true war stories are never about war? In what sense is a “true” war story actually true? That is, in O’Brien’s terms, what is the relationship between historical truth and fictional truth?

Tim O'Brien is confused about the Vietnam War. He is getting drafted into it, but is also protesting it. He gets to boot camp and finds it very difficult to know that he is going off to a country far away from home and fighting a war that he didn't believe was morally right. Before O'Brien gets to Vietnam he visits a military Chaplin about his problem with the war. "O'Brien I am really surprised to hear this. You're a good kid but you are betraying you country when you say these things"(60). This says a lot about O'Brien's views on the Vietnam War. In the reading of the book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien explains his struggles in boot camp

However, as the reader is to realize soon, by having his fictional characters tell stories and then recant the truth of those stories, O’Brien certainly calls into question the possibility of ever telling a true war story. The result of

Tim O’Brien uses two narrative techniques in “How to Tell a True War Story”. First he splits the story into three different sections. The first part being Rat Kiley writing his letter to Curt Lemon’s sister about the relationship they had. The next section is describing the correct way of writing a “true war story”. And the last is O’Brien looking back on stories and his story telling techniques. O’Brien separates the story into three different parts to give the reader an example of a story that is “true”. The next section would about the truth about writing a true story and the last section is his personal reflection on the whole situation. The other narrative technique is that O’Brien retells certain events. He retells how Curt Lemon died, he retells Mitchell Sanders telling a story, and he retells how women react when you tell them stories about the war. Tim O’Brien retells stories and

When truth became distorted by the ambiguous or absent motive for war, the soldiers needed to make up their own truths in order to keep sane enough to live through the senselessness and fear. Along with the fact that O’Brien’s boyhood died after killing the man in the path, his conception of truth died as well. He examines this fact when his daughter Kathleen asks him, “Daddy tell the truth, did you ever kill anybody?” and O’Brien ponders this stating, “And I can say, honestly, ‘Of course not.’ Or I can

The chapter "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" is another questionable narrative. The reader learns in the first paragraph that the narrator, Rat Kiley, is not known for his accurate story telling ability. "Rat had a reputation for exaggeration and overstatement, a compulsion to rev up the facts" (O'Brien 89). The protagonist, Tim

Tim O’ Brien gained many experiences and maturity by serving in Vietnam which are good but he also gained the feeling of guilt by serving in Vietnam. He hated the idea of war in the beginning and still did during the war but his experiences as soldier serving in the war led him into writing. What he writes is stories because he feels that there are values in telling stories. He even says that miracles happen in stories. When he says that there is value in stories and miracles in stories he means by his telling of stories he feels that he revives the dead and brings them into his life.

O’Brien always questioned the idea of “enemies”. Throughout the book he questioned in many ways and asked why were they enemies. What have they done to make them enemies, he sought for answers to his questions and eventually justified them by “if I don't kill them then they will kill me”.He was afraid of both killing, and dying but he knew that if he didn’t kill then he himself would be dead. These experiences and suppression of ideas are what led O’Brien’s to write The Things They Carried. In real life, Tim O'Brien feared the war and wrote this book to persuade others and to plant an idea in their head about the horrors that they should not want to suffer. Tim portrays his fear of the war by sharing his experiences as stories. Tim portrays many of his fears

The first character in the story is Jimmy Cross. Jimmy Cross and Tim O’Brien had a somewhat decent relationship after the war. “Many years after the war Jimmy Cross came to visit me at my home in Massachusetts, and for a full day we drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and talked about everything we had seen and done so long ago, all the things we still carried through our lives.” This quote is very powerful in its message. Then messages is that these stories weren't just war stories, those war stories strengthened their bond. Although they had some bad times, they also had funny and good

Does deviating from one’s gender norms inevitably doom one down a spiral of moral corruption? Tim O'Brien, author of “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” and Ernest Hemingway, author of “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, certainly seem to hold this view, as evident by the fates of the major female characters in their respective works. The deviance of the major female characters in both works appears to corrupt not only themselves, but also pollute their partners, causing them to suffer injury or harm as a result. The degree of injury ranges from negligible, like Fossie’s demotion and broken heart, to fatal, like the bullet that rips through Macomber’s skull. It begs the question, are these stories meant to serve as cautionary tales for their female readers, or possibly for their husbands, so they may recognize gender deviance and stop it in its tracks before their wives transform into Margot Macomber or Mary Anne Bell? This essay will analyze what such characters say about pervading views of women, both in society and in literature.

Anything can change a person if they are not ready for that change. The short story Sweetheart of The Song Tra Bong, in Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien represents this by showing change in Mary Anne, who is a character the reader probably would not expect to see in a book about the Vietnam War. There are many parts show the change in her from the average high school girl she used to be into a predatory killer, but there is only one reason for her change, and that is the war itself.

Thus, O’Brien wants the readers to understand that it is not the events that happened, but the feelings these men felt, and emphasize this by repeating it multiple times; then described that it is this way because since the soldiers are in the war they lose the sense of what is real and unreal. Therefore, O’Brien does this so his audience understand that there is more to the story than just words. As well as to make his audience think deeper in a way that when he is using metaphors saying “war is hell” war is not actually hell, but the events that occurred, people dying, being isolated, feeling shame because they acted unreasonable, made these men feel like they were actually in hell. Therefore, he successfully persuades the audience that the war stories are true and untrue by reinforcing his message at the end, and leave the reader with a final thought which is his whole point in this

The first three words of the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story” are, “This is true” (67). Although Tim O’Brien begins this chapter with such a bold and clear statement, throughout the chapter he has the reader thinking and confused when he contradicts himself by stating things such as, “In many cases a true war story cannot

In the book, O'Brien touched on what he as a writer and participant in the Vietnam War sometimes perceived in different ways and what actually happened. Overall he was looking at the "story truth" verses the "happening truth." When something happened within a war, such as a soldier dying, the truth was at many times exaggerated. You tell the story once, and the next time you add one little detail thus exaggerating the story over time. What happens is that when you are in the moment, things happen so fast. When you sit back and think upon it though, things go slower in your mind and you start to think something more of what actually happened.

Throughout the book, O’Brien repeatedly states his struggles in telling “a true war story.” One of the obstacle he faces in telling “a true war story” is the readers’ misconception that “truth” must be an event and not an emotion. To begin, O’Brien claims “A true war story is never moral… If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted… then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie… you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (68-69) and “All of us… like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth” (38). In these two statements, O’Brien has shown us that people want not a