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Summary Of How To Tell A True War Story By Tim O Brien

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“How to Tell a True War Story”
The Vietnam Conflict was a war that not only affected men physically, but it also affected them psychologically. Soldiers came home completely different after witnessing the abhorrent afflictions many faced in Vietnam. Tim O’brien was one of the soldiers, he came home different after the war was over. O’brien was one of the few who adjusted to civilian life well after the war was over. When Tim O’brien came back home, he used his education to author books about the Vietnam Conflict and how it affected himself and those around him through detailed descriptions of personal accounts. In “How to Tell a True War Story,” Tim O’Brien uses the torture of a baby buffalo to show how pain and depression manifest within the soldiers who have to cope with tragedy.
After Curt Lemon stepped on a bouncing betty and got killed, Rat Kiley was shaken over the loss of his best friend. Later that day Kiley began to torment a baby buffalo because he did not know how to cope with the …show more content…

“The whole platoon stood there watching, feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn’t a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo. Curt Lemon was dead.” Everyone understood how Kiley was hurting and that he was shooting the buffalo to deal with his suffering. Rat Kiley was able to release pain by inflicting it upon the buffalo. Later Kiley wrote a letter to Lemon’s sister explaining how Kiley loved Lemon and missed him. In the letter Rat Kiley also wrote about how Lemon was a great guy and soldier, but Lemon’s sister never wrote him back. Rat wrote this letter because he believed it would help him find closure with Lemon’s death. As time went on, Kiley never got a response and eventually grew tired of thinking the cooze would write him back. Rat Kiley tried to cope with the death of Curt Lemon in many different ways, but the death of his best friend will stay with him

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