Generally, when I think back to war stories I have heard, they involve heroics, valiant deeds, or triumph over evil. There may be some temporary hardship endured and some heavy inconveniences, but the war brings out the "inner man" in you, makes you "tough", or ultimately serves some time honored cliche about the benefits of surviving and living through a war. How does a reader feel after hearing one of these stories? Awe, respect for the individuals involved, and so on.
By contrast, these stories that O'Brien presents have no clear-cut moral. There is no heartwarming feeling at the end. There's an interesting layer of irony here. From what I can tell so far from reading in the book, O'Brien's stories are substantially fiction based. And yet, his stories ring truer to the human experience in a war zone larger than a lot of the other "true" war stories (mentioned in the first paragraph) that get passed around. The portion of the story where the narrator (presumably O'Brien) laments his situation of getting thrown into the Vietnam War is much more relevant, hard-hitting, and touching to the average reader than any stories I've heard involving killing mass amounts of enemy soldiers. O'Brien's stories, while not factually correct, inundate us heavily and effectively with O'Brien's view on the war - a depressing, heavy experience. Likewise, this is exactly how the reader feels after reading it - very cynical and upset. And the book makes this point in its transparent way of fabricated stories that can really bother a reader for that irony.
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ReplyDeleteI think that the idea behind this post is very interesting, and I completely agree with it. We, as people, read stories looking for their meaning, trying to find the hero within who is going to save the day. Most stories end with a clear-cut moral: something you can take from it. This is so commonly the case, that when a story doesn’t have a moral, or a heartwarming feeling at the end, the reader feels cheated. It is so interesting that O’Brien breaks all of these “rules” when creating his stories. It is clear that in his opinion, by not making the story unnecessarily positive and complete, the “truthfulness” of the story can actually shine through. His stories come across as very “real” and I think that just shows how sometimes without a clear cut moral, the author can get even more across. This just makes me wonder though, how it is possible for a story to not have a moral or a point? Isn’t there technically a reason behind everything?
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