What Is The Purpose Of A True War Story By Tim O Brien

Mark Miller
Professor Karin Hooks
Comp. ELA 162,
22, April 2023 A “True” War Story
Tim O’Brien creates a feeling of confusion for his readers by creating fictional characters that do obscure things during the war. Rat Kiley shoots down a water buffalo for his kicks. “He stepped back and shot it through the knee, he put the muzzle up against his mouth and shot away. Nobody said much. 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” (O’Brien 75). Tim illustrates how men lose their humanity when they’re at war, and in this incident, there is no pity for the animal because Rat wants to inflict pain on

It is incumbent that Tim O’Brien uses his own experience for inspiration of his novels, even though he claims the novels are fictional. In another lens of O’Brien’s literary style, according to Freud “the purpose of a dream is to reveal the suppressed feelings of the dreamer: Thoughts and desires that are not expressed when the dreamer is awake are likely to surface in his dream.” Furthermore, Freud explains that dreams become subconsciously present while the dreamer is awake “is a sort of substitution for those emotional and intellectual trains of thought” (Freud 7). Tim O’Brien uses this literary device to convey his emotions and desires as he looks back on the truth of what happened. As a Vietnam veteran himself, it would be difficult for him to open up about his past, but Tim O’Brien can open his door. O’Brien can express his true feelings and desires in the novel, just as a dreamer does in a dream (Freud 8). Freud describes the action as I previously mentioned “opened his door” to untapped feelings and desires as the novel is established as the counterpart of a dream. Conversely, this makes sense that O’Brien would use the advantages of this non-linear story-telling by giving us insight of his recollections from present, past, and deep past to lead the readers themselves down a similar path of memory lane. O’Brien is constantly trying to make you relate to his character so that you have a emotional response from the context of the events he takes you through. Tim O’Brien’s story telling is constantly shifting, for example when Tim contemplates Linda when talking about Ted Lavender and his responses after he dies “you make the dead talk... they sometimes say things like roger that or “Timmy Stop crying” which is what Linda said to me after she was dead” (O’Brien 219). For the purpose of generating new contexts through these