Tim O 'Brien's How To Tell A True War Story'

According to O’brien you tell a true war story in many ways. When he says that true war stories are never true means

Tim O’Brien, while having actually fought in Vietnam, did not write down entirely factual accounts of his experiences there. Due to this, the novel cannot be considered non-fiction and is instead distributed as a fiction title. This is not to say that the stories contained are not, to some degree, similar to what may have actually occurred to the author or other veterans. Many of the stories in the novel are inspired by actual experiences, but it is fiction.

Unquestionable is the fact that Billy feels this way because as he was being thanked for his service he felt upset and admitted that it is sort of weird being honored for the worst day of his life”. Billy wanted to avoid the situation and avoid being asked question that brought him back undesirable memories. Evidently, Billy’s mind “cracked from shock and grief”, shattering his sense of well-being and leaving him numb and vulnerable in a world he considers dangerous. With a focus on what happens during war, let’s take a look at what happens during

Throughout Tim O'Brien's, “How to Tell a True War Story”, the concept of truth and how one tells a “true” war story is discussed. Several factors contribute to the “truth” of the stories the soldiers told; the madness of the war, the civilians back home who didn't experience war or understand that it was hell, and the indescribable ways the soldiers felt. O'Brien explains that people willingly accept the facts of what happened during a war but, what they don’t consider is the deception of these facts that change through people’s stories. All of these factors combined caused the soldiers to react to certain situations and tell stories differently. O’Brien’s stories characterize that “truth” isn’t always a straightforward concept; and that it can be revealed in many ways. It can be the narrator’s intention, to provide the truth but the person listening might find a different truth to the story.

"The difference between fairy tales and war stories is that fairy tales begin with 'Once upon a time,' while war stories begin with 'Shit, I was there!'" (Lomperis 41). How does one tell a good war story? Is it important to be accurate to the events that took place? Does the reader need to trust the narrator? In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien examines what it takes to tell a good war story. He uses his own experiences in Vietnam in conjunction with his imagination to weave together a series of short stories into a novel.

process is included in his statement, "I was a liberal, for Christ's sake: if they needed

One of the effects Tim O’Brien wanted readers to understand was that war was horrific. In the short story “Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy?,” it says, “Though he was afraid,

In the chapter “How to tell a true war story” the author Tim O’Brien explains why war stories are complicated to tell and why they are so important to understand what the men actually went through. In order to make his point O’Brien uses the example of how a fellow soldier died and what occurred when the soldiers best friend and fellow soldier wrote to the dead man’s sister. O’Brien explains how each of the men experienced the death of the friend and how each point of view creates a blurred line between what happened and what felt like it happened. The story wraps up by describing the pain the soldier’s friend goes through and how he brutally takes it out on a young buffalo.

I went to war." 58. What O'Brien means by this is that he is no hero and not proud of himself because he fought in a war he was so against. There is no question that this could be considered an anti-war story, but I believe the use of storytelling is what makes this text unique and brings out the positive sides of the war of lessons learned and friendships created. O’Brien uses a unique way of writing to get the objectives of his stories across.

The “Baby Boom” era occurred between the years of the late 1950s thru the 19970s and shaped America and its culture into the type of country it is today. It helps to understand these times to prevent history from repeating itself while better understanding how people were feeling during that time. Also, to better understand what was happening during that time by reading the literature that was written during that time period. Through Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” to Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, they reflect the cultural, economic, political, and intellectual upheavals the United States was experiencing. These stories affect your way of thinking about these times, especially the war.

A war story is one of the things you never know is true some are gruesome and chilling other are just plan but witch is true. Tim O’Brian in The Things They Carried tell stories that combine reality with fiction because it is the one way you can be put in the mind of a solider. A true war story connects the reader to the war as if you were in a mind of a solider. A true war story doesn’t try to teach a lesson; it demonstrates the genuine evil that is part of war.

     In “How to Tell a True War Story” O’Brien explores the relationship between the events during a war and the art of telling those events. O’Brien doesn’t come to a conclusion on what is a true war story. He writes that one can’t generalize the story as well. According to O’Brien, war can be anything from love and beauty to the most horrid

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

The short story that will be discussed, evaluated, and analyzed in this paper is a very emotionally and morally challenging short story to read. Michael Meyer, author of the college text The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, states that the author of How to Tell a True War Story, Tim O’Brien, “was drafted into the Vietnam War and received a Purple Heart” (472). His experiences from the Vietnam War have stayed with him, and he writes about them in this short story. The purpose of this literary analysis is to critically analyze this short story by explaining O’Brien’s writing techniques, by discussing his intended message and how it is displayed, by providing my own reaction,

“You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let 's say, and afterward you ask, "Is it true?" and if the answer matters, you 've got your answer” (O’Brien 62). In the book The Things They Carried Tim O’ Brien displays throughout his short stories how much war can change you mentally, emotionally, and your sanity.