Rhetorical Devices In How To Tell A True War Story

Zoe Cloar
IB English HL 1
Root
October 2022
How To Analyze a True War Story A war story can be extremely detailed, and those who have not experienced war will never truly be able to comprehend. Those who have experienced war cannot tell a true war story, because a war story will never not contain perspective, and memory is not an exact record. Tim O’Brien published a short story after his experience in Vietnam called “How to Tell a True War Story”. His story is full of personality and tone, as if he is telling the story verbally, in a direct way. Throughout the story, the author explains “How to Tell a True War Story” using his annecdotes, and with each annedote he gives a new explaination of what a true war story is. In the short story, How

The soldiers have become distant from the civilized people they once were that they tell stories that the stories they tell are not the truth, rather a rewritten memory. The morning after Mitchel Sanders tells his story, he makes a confession, “[...] I had to make up a few things [...] The glee club. There wasn’t any glee club,’” (O’Brien 5). The some of the details in the story may not be true, but the principle, the takeaway of the story is what the soldier remembered to be the most imporant part of the story. War is something someone can never understand without experiencing it themselves, the repetition of being surrounded by death, different events but the same occurrence happening consecutively until the war ends. To the soldiers, the war never ends. Their traumatic memories of the war are an entirely new type of battle the soldier face, yet have no training for. The author chose anicdotes that are incomprehendable, therefore adding to the inhumane ideals and thought processes they developed in war, “After supper Rat Kiely went over and stroked its nose. He opened up a can of C rations, pork and beans, but the baby buffalo wasn’t interested. [... Rat] stepped back and shot it right through the front knee” (O’Brien 6). Rat’s best friend had died earlier that day. Rat never learned coping, he never had to face watching his best friend die, adn therefore never had to cope with his grief, leading him to put his anger towards a baby water buffalo. His shots were never to kill the animal, but to hurt it in the way he was hurting. His first shot to the knee is not a deadly shot, yet it was painful. His fellow soldiers sat and watched him, not stopping Rat’s aggression, not trying to help. They sat there and let him