Examples Of How To Tell A True War Story

The Truth Behind A True War Story
In the novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien reflects upon the slippery nature of truth, experience, memory and storytelling. Many stories throughout the novel reflect similar meanings with those connections. With the use of the same characters and similar Vietnam War background, O’Brien expresses different points of views to represent the different emotions and reactions that are present throughout the entirety of the novel. Throughout these three stories, How to Tell a True Story, Notes, and Speaking of Courage, O'Brien expresses how to tell if a war story is true and how war stories are interpreted in society.
“How to Tell a True War Story” examines the complex relationship between the experience

SOC, “Notes” and “How to Tell a True War Story” reflect the thought of “tell[ing] a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.” Each of these stories have each own purpose and own connection but are all associated with each other. SOC was a prime example of how “it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.” Although, “Notes” provides the reader with background information to the formation of this story. O’Brien speaks on how “the details of Norman Bowker’s story were missing,” in his original writing but by telling these stories “you objectify your own experience”. O’Brien altered the story because of how in storytelling “you start sometimes with an incident that truly happened...and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur.” Consequently, O’Brien believes adding in a few deceits improves the story but later tells the reader “that part of the story is my own” referring to the deceptions within the story. O’Brien shows how the truth within war stories are constantly altered and how “there is always that surreal seemingness” which “makes the story seem untrue but which in fact represents the hard exact truth as it