Transcript
Nobody truly knows what is true about war until they experience it. “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien was published in his book “The Things They Carried” in 1990 which compiled all his famous short stories. Tim O’Brien was a United States military sergeant that served for two years during the Vietnam war. O’Brien recalls memories regarding death, humor, and obscurity during his time in Vietnam and with them he points out details about his stories that make it true. He claims that his unbelievably drastic endeavors are things you must look out for when believing a story about war. Through the descriptive stories of death and hardship, O’Brien creates the feeling of love for life as he recalls memories of his time at war and the people he spent it with. It allows us to look at life in a deeper meaning. The realization that he concluded during his time at war is that it does not matter how hard life is, you must share it with the people that you love and support them constantly. You must find a way to love life even in tough times.
The details that O’Brien describes about what makes a war story true are unexpected. He emphasizes that if the story is embarrassing for the soldier to tell, it is probably true. He also claims that the things that happen at war are not the type of things that a person would think to be normal, but over time they become numb to it. This leads to another point that O’Brien makes about war stories having to be unbelievable for them to be trusted. He claims that the normal person would not think it to be true because of the immense obscurity. For example, he talks about the time that he and his close friends were messing around and then suddenly one of them is laying on the ground dead in the blink of an eye. O’Brien’s story is framed around the memory of his friend dying and how one of the soldiers, Rat, mailed his sister to tell her, yet she never wrote back.
“The letter gets very sad and serious. Rat pours his heart out. He says he loved the guy. He says the guy was his best friend in the world. They were like soul mates, he says, like twins or something, they had a whole lot in common. He tells the guy’s sister he’ll look her up when the war’s over.
So, what happens?
Rat mails the letter. He waits two months. The dumb cooze never writes back.”
This creates the meaning of the story that you must love the people that are always there for you. At some point in war, the other soldiers are your family and the only people that you can rely on. You build a bond with them that nobody else, not even your family would understand. War makes you appreciate the bonds you create with people through hardship.
Moral values of Americans have changed widely since 1968 which is when O’Brien’s memories are recalled from. He talks about a variety of terrible things that he was instructed to do and when he came back home to try and retell them, nobody found them to be immoral. O’Brien says, “A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done” (87). The Vietnam war is known to be one of the most brutal due to the advancements in chemical weapons and common use of guerilla warfare (Gombosi 1). Although brutality of war has probably not changed very much, people would never think to accept these things as being righteous now. This brings up the topic of O’Brien’s story in a broader meaning. Although he did not think that the tasks that he was instructed to do were morally correct, he eventually became numb to it and lacked memory of certain parts. The things that he experienced made him question his memory and morals.
“Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn’t hit you until twenty years later, in your sleep, and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, except when you get to the end you’ve forgotten the point again. And then for a long time you lie there watching the story happen in your head. You listen to your wife’s breathing. The war’s over. You close your eyes. You smile and think, Christ, what’s the point?” (O’Brien 32)
War is often hard to recall. The immoral acts that he committed and saw committed by others sits in the back of his mind with no answers for him to get over the trauma. People often must speak about their trauma with others to break down the meaning and have some type of resolution, but O’Brien cannot form the words that can describe what happened. He cannot recall his memory to be accurate. He describes how hard it is for him to explain, but he will always have fellow soldiers to talk to about it and lean on.
O’Brien brings light to his experiences in Vietnam as he includes joyful memories and describes the strong friendships that he made with other soldiers. These descriptions provide readers with the stories meaning of friendship and love. All the soldiers were scared. He even mentions that they didn’t know how to cope. Although there are ways that soldiers try to cope, they often psychologically cannot revisit their memories as they are mind boggling and something that should not be relived. It is supposed that a great percentage of soldiers have recurrent intrusive thoughts and have sleeping problems for years following their service (Smith, et al. 1). This goes to show that soldiers cannot easily tell a war story as they are finding a way to understand it. The only people who can accurately feel these emotions are the soldiers that went through it shared the same terrifying and out of body experiences. The most important thing that they got out of their service was the lifelong friendship of the people they shared it with. They have an unbreakable bond forever.
O’Brien’s story is not truly written to inform readers about how to believe if a story they are told is accurate or not. The true stories that he tells were told out of vulnerability to express that emotions that millions of soldiers are going through. It cannot be explained in an understandable or basic level. O’brien rambles to explain “war is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead” which shows that their thoughts about war are contradicting and there is so much more to it than what they can describe (35). O’Brien overcomes his psychological battle by writing his thoughts on paper and relying on those that can relate to cope. He finds love for life through his experience. O’Brien now thinks of life in a deeper meaning and loves who he shares life with. A great take away from this short story is that life is made for living. There are an abundant number of obstacles that you must overcome, but this is what makes life enjoyable in the long run. Love everything that faces you, good or bad. There is no hardship that cannot be faced and learned from. Life is made for overcoming.
Works Cited
Gombosi, Kimberly. “Inquiry LessonWhy Was the Vietnam War so Controversial?” University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, 2012, www.uww.edu/Documents/colleges/coeps/cni/social%20studies/lesson%20plans/2012-2013/Vietnam%20War.pdf.
O’Brien, Tim. “How to Tell a True War Story.” The Things They Carried. North Dakota State University, 1990, pp. 84-91.
Smith, Melinda, et al. “PTSD in Military Veterans: Causes, Symptoms, and Steps to Recovery.” Health Guide, 2018, www.helpguide.org/articles/ptsd-trauma/ptsd-in-military-veterans.htm.
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Google Images, Common License
Google Images, Common License
Google Images, Common License
Google Images, Common License
Google Images, Common License
Google Images, Common License
Google Images, Common License
Google Images, Common License