Telling a “true” war story is simple. Make it sound exciting, tell it with a straight face, and create an underlying narrative that cannot be called into question. Tim O’Brien in, “How to Tell a True War Story”, views one’s perception of reality and one’s truth as both objective and subjective. Much like Jayanthi and Alicia in Leslie Bell’s article, “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and The Paradox of Sexual Freedom,” they also tell “ true war stories” of the times when they were raped. However, these girls cope with their traumatic experiences by disassociation and recreating their own perception of reality. And likewise in Azar Nafisi, “Selections From: Reading Lolita in Tehran,” the women in Nafisi’s reading group disassociate from their …show more content…
Whether it be sexual or political violence, it is still harmful and scaring to the mind nonetheless. For instance, Jayanthi, within Bell’s article, deals with the harsh reality of her rape by four separate men in India after leaving a club with them to get a ride home. She was affected by this event and starting doubting her perception of the details of the rape. However, Alicia went through an even rougher sexually violent period because, “Alicia was kissed and touched sexually by her father,”(Bell 40). But much like Jayanthi, Alicia was also raped, except by a college friend whom she had been acquainted with since her college years. She did not consider the rape her first time. The sexual violence both Jayanthi and Alicia endured, took a toll on their perceptions following the incidents. Much like sexual violence, political violence can be just as damaging to the mind and one’s perceptions. Tim O’Brien, during the Vietnam War, saw first hand the violence that comes from political arguments through fighting. In such a politically run environment, it is easy for events to become misconstrued and for much physical violence to occur. Although killing at war is acceptable, it is not acceptable within the “real world,” creating much room for misconceptions about killing and certain events to be seen. This political violence, as also seen in Nafisi’s text, highlights the strict …show more content…
Coping through disassociation is definitely a negative way to deal with “Truth”. Through disassociating, two types of coping methods occur- emotion-focused and problem-focused. Emotion-Focused Coping essentially is avoiding thinking about a painful situation and bottling up the emotions within. Much like the characters within the texts, Alicia focused on this method after disassociating her rape saying to herself, “You gotta move on. Get up, go forward, come on.” (Bell 40). By pushing forward, and disassociating, and leaving her past behind her, emotionally it made her weak, but lead her to create a new environment where the past didn’t matter. Consequently, Problem-Focused Coping is attacking the situation head on. This is how the characters should face these problems. Like Nafisi, she focused on this method through creating her group and creating a safe-haven for the girls to escape such totalitarian rules, “When my students came into that room… each one gained an outline and a shape becoming her own inimitable self. “(Nafisi 281). By attacking the problem head on, Nafisi disassociated with the totalitarian reality, and create a new reality where these women could finally be
“This is true.” (O’Brien, 420) – with this simple statement which also represents a first, three-word introductory paragraph to Tim O’Brien’s short story, “How to Tell a True War Story”, the author reveals the main problem of what will follow. “Truth” – when looked up in a dictionary, we would probably find definitions similar to sincerity and honesty on the one hand, and correctness, accuracy or reality on the other hand. When looking at these definitions, one can make out two groups of meaning: While sincerity and honesty are very subjective, correctness or accuracy are supposed to be objective by nature. One can be sincere and still not report the truth, due to the simple fact that one does not know any better. Accuracy, however, is supposed to represent facts, bits and pieces of information that paint a picture of an event, untouched by opinion or attitude.
The truth to any war does not lie in the depths of storytelling but rather it’s embedded in every person involved. According to O’Brien, “A true war story does not depend on that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (pg. 80). Truths of any war story in my own opinion cannot be fully conveyed or explained through the use of words. Any and all war stories provide specific or certain facts about war but each of them do not and cannot allow the audience to fully grasp the tru...
According to the Indian Times, madness is the rule in warfare (Hebert). The madness causes a person to struggle with experiences while in the war. In “How to Tell a True War Story”, the madness of the war caused the soldiers to react to certain situations within the environment differently. Tim O’Brien’s goal with the story “How to Tell a True War Story” is to shed light on the madness the soldiers face while in the war. Tim O’Brien tells the true story of Rat experiences of the war changing his life.
Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried challenges the reader to question what they are reading. In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story”, O’Brien claims that the story is true, and then continues to tell the story of Curt’s death and Rat Kiley’s struggle to cope with the loss of his best friend. As O’Brien is telling the story, he breaks up the story and adds in fragments about how the reader should challenge the validity of every war story. For example, O’Brien writes “you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (69), “in many cases a true war story cannot be believed” (71), “almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true” (81), and “a thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth (83). All of those examples are ways in which O’Brien hinted that his novel is a work of fiction, and even though the events never actually happened – their effects are much more meaningful. When O’Brien says that true war stories are never about war, he means that true war stories are about all the factors that contribute to the life of the soldiers like “love and memory” (85) rather than the actual war. Happening truth is the current time in which the story was being told, when O’Brien’s daughter asked him if he ever killed anyone, he answered no in happening truth because it has been 22 years since he was in war and he is a different person when his daughter asked him. Story truth
...n amnesiac nation into “working through” its troubled past.” (Bly ,189) Story telling was the soldier’s salvation, their survival method. Being able to tell their stories let them express everything they were feeling and ultimately cope with the horrors of war and the guilt the carried.
King, Rosemary. "O'Brien's 'How to Tell a True War Story.'" The Explicator. 57.3 (1999): 182. Expanded Academic ASAP.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried has readers and critics alike scratching their heads with wonder about the meaning of “story-truth” and “happening-truth.” Although, he served in the Vietnam War from 1968 until 1970, he fabricates the events of the war throughout The Things They Carried. At the same time, he insists that the truth lies at the heart of the emotion in the story, an idea that many readers question. Furthermore, it is pointless for the reader to attempt to sort through the stories and differentiate between the “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” because it is nearly impossible. This tactic is one of O’Brien’s more ingenious writing methods. He does not want the reader to know the difference between the two because in his opinion that fact is irrelevant. O’Brien obviously thinks outside the box and has everyone questioning reality. However, this fact is truly ironic, because the point is not to care what type of “truth” it is, but to instead feel the raw beauty of the emotion and to accept it as the truth. While trying to define “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” a couple chapters in particular focus on the idea of truth, “How to Tell a True War Story,” “The Man I Killed” and “Good Form.” O’Brien believes that the most important thing for a reader is to experience the emotion of the story, be it “story-truth” or “happening-truth,” as long as the real emotion is conveyed and understood by the reader, then it is as true as it could possibly be.
The effects from this corrupt enterprise are undeniably painful and scaring. In common societies women are belittled and objectified excessively, it is hardly considered a conflict when unimaginable pain is inflicted upon them. The physical, emotional, and mental distortion and destruction, caused by violence last an eternity. The inane fear, agony of sha...
O’Brien, Tim. “How to Tell a True War Story.” The Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.
King, Rosemary. "O'Brien's 'How to Tell a True War Story.'" The Explicator. 57.3 (1999): 182. Expanded Academic ASAP.
The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the devoted awareness of those who fantasize war and the memories that support it.
Several stories into the novel, in the section, “How to tell a true war story”, O’Brien begins to warn readers of the lies and exaggerations that may occur when veterans tell war stories.
War does leave people with all kinds of trauma as illustrated in the Bao Ninh’s short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” and Nicola Zavaglia’s documentary film Barbed Wire and Mandolins. When comparing the effectiveness of conveying the trauma of war towards the audiences, however, the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” is more effective due to its well-developed plot and the emotional responses from the readers arising from the story.
“And then one morning, all alone, Mary Anne walked off into the mountains and did not come back” (110). Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” presents an all-American girl who has been held back by social and behavioral norms – grasping for an identity she has been deprived the ability to develop. The water of the Song Tra Bong removes Mary Anne’s former notion of being as she, “stopped for a swim” (92). With her roles being erased Mary Anne becomes obsessed with the land and mystery of Vietnam and is allowed to discover herself. Through the lenses of Mark Fossie and the men in the Alpha Company, Mary Anne becomes an animal and is completely unrecognizable by the end of the story. Mary Anne, however, states she is happy and self-aware. The men of the Alpha Company argue for virtue in that Mary Anne was “gone” (107) and that what she was becoming “was dangerous… ready for the kill” (112). They did not want to accept a woman becoming something different from what women always were. In “How Tell to a True War Story” we are told that a true war story “does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior” (65). Mary Anne did not truly become ‘dark’, because to her this is not a story about war; this is a story about a woman attempting to overcome gender roles and the inability of men to accept it.
In “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien, Orwell’s ideas are questioned and the competition between the truth and the underlying meaning of a story is discussed. O’Brien’s story depicts that the truth isn’t always a simple concept; and that not every piece of literature or story told can follow Orwell’s list of rules (Orwell 285). The story is told through an unnamed narrator as he re-encounters memories from his past as a soldier in the Vietnam War. With his recollection of past encounters, the narrator also offers us segments of didactic explanation about what a “true war story” is and the power it has on the human body (O’Brien 65). O’Brien uses fictional literature and the narration of past experiences to raise a question; to what extent should the lack of precision, under all circumstances, be allowed? In reality, no story is ever really truthful, and even if it is, we have no proof of it. The reader never feels secure in what they are being told. The reliability of the source, the author, and the narrator are always being questioned, but the importance of a story isn’t about the truth or the accuracy in which it is told, but about the “sunlight” it carries (O’Brien 81).