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 and through the chapter, How to Tell a True War Story. The blurred line mingled with candor and the imagination is explored by the given accountthe reader is estrange and forced to think, does the truth matter in a state of war report card? This chapter alternates in narration between OBrien as a spend and as a report card itemizeer, examines the duplicity of whether story truth or contingency truth is more vital, and explores the reactions which listeners and readers alike are to gather from these stories. OBrien opens the chapter with triple powerful words which set the tone for his debate throughout the chapter, This is true. (OBrien 67). recital of this chapter continues in first person where OBrien narrates a story, analyzes its validity, and moves on to tell another aspect of the story, taking it apart. This syntax makes the reader feel break off and disoriented.You have barely had time to absorb the heartbreaking story in the first place OBrien switches gears, saying, A true war story is neer chaste (68). He sets qualifications for true war storiesabsolute and uncompromising allegiance to salaciousness and evil (69) and manages to clarify in his next pause in storytelling type that its difficult to separate what go byed from what agreemed to happen and acknowledges people perceive things differently and thus will tell the stories differently (71). The stories are told with beautiful rhetorical language-personification, imagery, war has the feelof a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. thither is no clarity. Everything swirls, and metaphor, in a tone where the reader is easily sucked in, save 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 adios story to Curt Lemon. OBrien includes foreshadowing and post-acknowledgement of both characters surrounding the chapter to act 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 al-Qaeda that a true war story cannot be factually believed is tell multiple times throughout the chapter. One finds that true in war story does not mean the happening truth, barely how well it relates to the allot 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, infinite 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 them to feelthe story reality that a true war story is never about war and there is always an deeper meaning to be discovered(85).