I believe in class someone brought up that the chapter “How to Write a True War Story” could be seen as a metaphor for the Vietnam War or war in general. I want to build on that thought. We noted how O’Brien’s rules for how to write a true war story often contradicted each other. He says that war stories have no moral and then later references the moral of a true war story. He says they have no point and then talks about the point of a true war story. A war story is true if you cannot believe it but it is true if your stomach believes it. It is a very confusing chapter, but then again, war itself is confusing and full of contradictions.
At the end of “On the Rainy River,” O’Brien declares that he “was a coward. [He] went to the war” (p. 58). He goes to war to avoid the embarrassment of being called a coward, but fighting and killing in a war he does not agree with is an act of cowardice. He is a coward if he stays and a coward if he goes. This contradiction leads to another. Is it right to kill the enemy, or wrong to kill someone you do not even know? Is a soldier a hero or a villain? It is a matter of perception. To their respective countries, soldiers are heroes, fighting for freedom and their homeland. To the opposing side, soldiers are villains, killing friends and family members, destroying homes and livelihoods. We are taught that it is wrong to kill our fellow man, but right to kill for our country.
When a man goes to war, his morality and his identity are often split in two. The emotional crisis of this split is described in “The Man I Killed.” O’Brien kills the man because he had a weapon and that is what he was told was the right thing to do. Kiowa assures him, “No choice, Tim. What else could you do?...Right?” (p. 36). But he as he looked at the man and thought of who the dead man could have been, he felt in his gut that it was the wrong. Soldiers are taught to think of the enemies as less than human, but how can they when the enemies are clearly human?
Soldiers are lied to in order to be motivated; soldiers lie to other soldiers to comfort them; soldiers lie to themselves to deal with their burdens. So how can a true war story not include lies?
Incredible post--a truly (!) elegant execution of your ideas. You have managed to articulate in relatively concrete terms the undoubtedly abstract concept of "war" that O'Brien presents us with in the novel.
ReplyDeleteA war story has to be everything that war is, or else the story would have no truth. But, as you said, lies are an indelible aspect of war, so the stories have to include lies in order to tell the truth. I think this is what O'Brien tries to convey when he talks about making up parts of the story in order to make it more true. In war, though the details can be fuzzy, the emotions are 100% real, maybe even too real. So it almost doesn't matter that the details are changed and manipulated, so long as they make you feel all of the emotion of the war.
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