A True War Story

In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story, by O’Brien , O’Brien tend to use a lot of surrealism throughout the soldier's stories. When the soldiers tell their story they tend to add things to it to make the story seem more fascinating to those listening to it, which leads to it having surrealism in it. However, that’s when people start to question if it’s actually true or not true , that’s an answer nobody really wants to know. O’Brien stats, “ A true war story is never moral.” It does not instruct nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior.”(65) The story basically tells itself , it will leaving one feeling some type of way at the end if true.
O’Brien demonstrates surrealism through Mitchell Sander point of view of his war story and what happen well hunting for the enemy.
This was war story was told from a third person because Mitchell Sander didn’t feel like talking about it and have it all come back to him like it was just the other day.For example O’Brien states , “ This is mountians.” “You don’t know spooky till you been there.” “Jungle,sort of, expect it’s way up in the clouds and there’s always this fog -- like rain....” (69) Basically , O’Brien is telling what it’s environment was like well out there at war and how it was scary to the soldier because they couldn’t see, or talk , as if they were blind or deaf. How he reaches this and make it be surreal is by add how the soldier started to hear noises such as, …. “weird echoes and stuff. Like a radio or something , but it’s not a radio, it’s strange gook music that comes right out of the rocks.”(69)This could be true or not true , since the soldier were out in the mountain for seven day straight not see anything therefore not being able to eat could most likely be hallucinating about hearing sounds and what not(surrealism). “I mean , this is the wilderness -- no way, it can’t be real -- but there it is….” (70) Well the soldiers were out in the
mountain the nature can bring and make things look like things one hasn’t seen before. “Everything talks.” “The whole country.” “Vietnam.”(70) O’Brien achieve his effect on surrealism in this chapter by showing that something can be true and real to someone else’s, well in someone else's eyes it totally different. And he, O’Brien, demonstrates this when Sander comes up to him to confess that some of it wasn’t true , because he didn’t understand the moral of his own story once told from someone's else's perspective.Sander did try to redeem himself by using the silenced as his moral. “In a true war story,if there’s a moral at all….” “You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning.” Basically people view surrealism differently. Surreal, could be true with all the words and descriptions used such as the soldiers telling the story , or could not be true and just made up to make those believe something.