Commentary How to Tell True War Story Essay

Tim OBriens The Things They Carried is a work of metafiction that manages to test fiction in its very nature through the chapter, How to Tell a True War Story. The blurred line between reality and the imagination is explored by the given bankers billthe endorser is alienated and forced to think, does the truth matter in a war story? This chapter alternates in narration between OBrien as a soldier and as a storyteller, examines the duplicity of whether story truth or happening truth is more vital, and explores the reactions which listeners and readers alike are to gather from these stories. OBrien opens the chapter with trinity powerful words which set the tone for his debate throughout the chapter, This is true. (OBrien 67). Narration of this chapter continues in first person where OBrien narrates a story, analyzes its validity, and moves on to tell other aspect of the story, taking it apart. This syntax makes the reader odour interrupted and disoriented.You have barely had time to absorb the heartbreaking story before OBrien switches gears, saying, A true war story is never moral (68). He sets qualifications for true war storiesabsolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil (69) and manages to clarify in his next pause in storytelling warning that its difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen and acknowledges people perceive subjects differently and thus will tell the stories differently (71). The stories are told with beautiful figurative language-personification, imagery, war has the feelof a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity. Everything swirls, and metaphor, in a tone where the reader is easily sucked in, only to be jarred awake with the factual and almost conversational tone of OBriens analyses.To put things in context, the previous chapter, Friends, mentions Rat kiley as the helpful medic for the dying friend. Dentist follows as a goodbye story to Curt Lemon. OBrien includes foreshadowing and post-acknowledgement of both characters surrounding the chapter to earn them together and create an undercurrent within the chapter where the readeris forced to see how the order, though on the surface seem random, is actually predetermined. The core theme that a true war story can non be factually believed is repeated multiple times throughout the chapter. One finds that true in war story does not mean the happening truth, but how well it relates to the appropriate emotional response, or story truth.The ultimate example of this is the heroic story of a man throwing himself onto a grenade to save his comrades. Whether or not anyone survives, Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and by a total lie another thing may not happen and be truer than the truthThats a true story that never happened (83-84). The author leaves the reader with mixed emotions, where they may feel cheated from the happening truth, but they also experience the emotion the storyteller wants t hem to feelthe story reality that a true war story is never more or less war and there is always an deeper meaning to be discovered(85).