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Nov 24, 2024
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In “How to Tell a True War Story,” Tim O’Brien varies from a straight forward approach
because of the horrifying contents of war. Instead, his approach is one of repetition, where he
retells the death of Curt Lemon, but with different versions. He adopts this structure to make it
more tolerable to his audience, express that true war stories never seem to have an end, and
demonstrate how truths become contradictory.
True war stories by nature are so gruesome and devastating, that the author has to
compromise its accuracy by inserting nonfactual, yet more palatable details to cause his listener
to believe. The author supports this point when he says, “All you can do is tell it one more time,
patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get to the real truth” (296). In
another section he says, “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t because the
normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness” (289). Interestingly,
O’Brien reinforces this idea again with the example of the story that Mitchell Sanders tells.
Sander says to him, “I got a confession to make… last night, man, I had to make up a few
things… yeah, but listen, it’s still true…those six guys, they heard wicked sound out there…they
heard sound you just plain won’t believe.” In those examples, we clearly observed how the
author uses his peculiar structure to reveal the necessity to season war stories to transform them
from their raw and dreadful state, for the sake of his hearers.
Once again we see that due to the horrendous contents of war, O’Brien organizes his
story to display that war stories seem to never have closure. O’Brien enhances this point when he
says, “But I could tell how desperately Sanders wanted me to believe him, his frustration at not
quite getting the details right, not quite pinning down the definitive truth” (292). A little further
within the same context, as we’re eagerly waiting for Sanders to reveal the moral to his story, he
says, “Hear that quiet, man? There’s your moral” (292). Later on in the story O’Brien himself
expresses his own similar frustration. O’Brien says, “If I could ever get the story right…if I
could somehow recreate the fatal whiteness of that light… then you would believe the last thing
Lemon believed, which for him must have been the final truth”(296).
Although the statement “truths are contradictory” is ironic, complex, and an oxymoron, it
is clearly illustrated by the following example: After losing his best friend, Rat Kiley was in utter
sorrow and despair, and chose to unleash his pain and suffering by making a baby water buffalo
his therapeutic punching bag; he tortures it to death without any compassion. Everyone around
him knew this was unthinkable and irrational, however, “the old rules are no longer binding, the
old truths are no longer true…right spills into wrong…order into chaos… love into hate…
ugliness into beauty…law into anarchy… civility into savagery”(295).
The author structures this story in an uncommon fashion because actual war is simply not
something one experiences every day. War stories are set apart and in their own league. They are
complex and mysterious; therefore, they are unorthodox. The core reason for their distinctiveness
is because of the psychological trauma that war impacts on surviving witnesses. They are left
even without speech at times and struggle to precisely communicate such a terrifying and
unfathomable experience. In the story that Mitchell Sanders recounts, when the six soldiers are
being confronted by the colonel who demands an explanation, after the terrible experience in the
mountains, they only could stare at him with a look that reads,” Everything you can’t ever
say”(291).
“Speaking of Courage” tells us the story from Norman Bowker’s point of view of
Kiowa’s death in Vietnam. Because of the heavy rains, “the Song Tra Bong overflowed its banks
and the land turned into a deep, thick muck for a quarter mile on either side”(136). One night the
platoon had settled near the river. Soon they realized they had settled in a shit field, and later that
night they took mortar fire. “The field just exploded. Rain and slop and shrapnel, nowhere to run,
and all they could do was worm down into slime and cover up and wait”(142). When Norman
turned around, he saw his friend Kiowa sinking in the field. He tried to pull Kiowa out, but then
he saw he was sinking down as well, so he could not save him. After the war, Norman returned
to his town. On a Sunday during the summer, he started to drive his father’s truck around the
town. He soon realized he had nowhere to go and monotonously goes in circles around the lake.
While doing this, he remembers the things he used to do before Vietnam. He remembers his
girlfriend, Sally Krammer, and his friend who drowned in the lake.
Most of his friends were now
doing other things, had different jobs, lived in different places, and most of the high school girls
he knew were either married or gone somewhere else, including his girlfriend who is now
married. He realizes everything the way he knew it, has gone. As he is driving, he imagines
going to Sally’s house, talking to her, just catching up and telling her about the time he almost
won the Silver Star. However, he never sums up the courage to do so. At another point, he
imagines having a conversation with his father where he also tells him the story about the time
he almost won the Silver Star, the time when Kiowa died. This tells us that Norman wanted to
tell his story. He wanted to have someone to rely on, someone to comfort him for not being able
to save Kiowa. He imagined a conversation with his father where he would tell him that he was
not a coward because he won seven medals. He wanted his father to tell him that it was ok that
he couldn’t save Kiowa, that it was not his fault.
“Notes” tell us about a letter that was written by Norman Bowker and sent to Tim
O’Brien. In this letter, Norman talks about how he could not find a meaning for his life. “There’s
no place to go. Not just in this lousy little town. In general. My life, I mean. It’s almost like I got
killed over in Nam” (150). He says that he had worked briefly in different places and that he
even tried going to college. However, he says, everything seemed so abstract, so unreal
compared to what they lived in Vietnam. In the letter, Norman tells O’Brien that he should write
a story about a guy who could not put his life together after coming back from Vietnam; “this
guy wants to talk about it, but he can’t”(151). Basically, he was asking O’Brien to write a story
about his own life. O’Brien takes Norman’s request and publishes a story somewhat related but
different. When Norman reads the story, he feels disappointed because many things they lived
were left out, mainly Kiowa’s death and the shit field. Eight months later, Norman Bowker
hanged himself. In a way, Norman was hoping to have his story told, even if by someone else,
since he could not sum up the courage to do it himself, so that he could finally let go of the guilt
he carried. O’Brien returned from Vietnam and was able to readjust to society. He had
experienced the same things as Norman; however, Norman was unable to leave the past behind
and ended up dead. Tim was able to channel his emotions through his writing. Norman wanted to
tell his story; he wanted to have someone to talk to but didn’t have anyone. Perhaps if he had
been able to talk about the issue that was haunting him, Kiowa’s death, he could have found the
relief he desperately sought.
Kiowa’s death placed a heavy burden on Norman Bowker. He feels he is responsible and
that he could have saved him if he had been a bit more courageous. In “Speaking of Courage”,
we see that Norman tries to find closure for Kiowa’s death by telling the story about the event.
He imagines conversations with his girlfriend and with his dad. These invented exchanges show
us that he was desperately trying to find someone who could understand him and comfort him
and tell him that Kiowa’s death was not his fault. Unfortunately, Norman is never able to talk
about the events and is never able to leave the experience behind; he keeps it alive in his mind.
Norman’s father wanted him to bring medals from Vietnam. Norman sees the medals as a means
to gain approval from his father and talks about how he almost won the Silver Star, and that he
wished his father would tell him the other seven medals he won make up for it. The Silver Medal
is related to Norman’s inability to save Kiowa because he could not immerse himself totally in
the shit field. The lake in Norman’s town represents the shit field in Vietnam. Norman’s circling
of the lake represents how he was never able to leave that experience behind and move on. In
“Notes” we see Norman’s last attempt to finally let go of the weight he carried. He realizes he is
unable to tell the story himself and asks his friend Tim to write it for him. When Tim finally
writes it, Norman finds it unreal and totally different from what they had lived. As a result, he
feels his friend has failed him and the last hope he had for his story to be told was gone. Because
of this, he is no longer able to carry this trauma anymore and ends up killing himself.
The young men sent to Vietnam had a normal life with their friends and families,
however all dreams and aspirations they had were extinguished by the terrible emotional burden
of the war. Norman’s life was drastically changed, not only because of the war in Vietnam in
general, but mainly because of Kiowa’s death. He feels responsible for not saving Kiowa and
carries that burden from Vietnam back home. His inability to talk about the event is what makes
him sink deeper into depression and ultimately causes him to commit suicide. If he had found a
way to channel the emotional burden he carried, he could have had a new beginning after
Vietnam just like the author Tim O’Brien did. With the telling of his story in the novel, at last
Norman Bowler can find peace.
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