An Analysis Of Mr. O 'Brien's Essay Titled'
Olivia Cousins Roosevelt English 101 Essay 02 Lies are complicated things. They can range from a little white lie to lies which can create a web of deception that can produce a noose that chokes you, binding you very move you make. However, the nature of a lie is dependent on the individual who tells it. For example, the retelling of events is often skewed because of personal perspectives. As Mr. O’Brien states, a true war story is never believable. One example is Sanders’ story about a six man patrol group. Sanders tells, how while on patrol, the men were not allowed to make a sound. They were supposed to be silent as death itself. They were camouflaged in a bush for seven straight days, and had to be invisible. Mr. Sanders describes how spooky this seemed because the patrol took place in a mountain jungle with a fog that was so thick, “you can’t find your own pecker to piss with” (72). Within this
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silence, sound seemingly carries forever. After a few days, the patrol members started to hear sounds that seemed like voices at a cocktail party, a glee club, and even an opera. Later, Sanders says to the narrator that he had lied about the man hearing the glee club and the opera, but that he had done so because otherwise the author would not have believed him. The narrator then asks, “Alright… what’s the moral?” (77), to which Sanders replies, after a long stretching silence, “Hear that quiet man... That quiet- just listen. There’s your moral” (77). It’s almost as though you have to lie to make the reality bearable because in silence even the most logical men could go insane. Can there be a moral in a true war story? O’Brien argues “in a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, its like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper morning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe ‘Oh’.” (77) In the beginning Mr.
O’Brien describes a solder called Rat and how he lost his friend. Rat had then mailed a letter to the guy’s sister. In the letter, he spills out his heart and soul, just talking about this man known as her brother and how great he was. She never replies, O’Brien then states that a true war story “does not instruct, nor encourages virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it.” (68). The question that comes to mind though is: What about the sister? O’Brien and Rat did not even know if the sister ever received the letter. They had sheer optimism that the letter made it safely to her home and that she read it. But because they needed to have faith in something, and this may as well have been the mail system, they blamed her when she could have been dead for all they knew. They only believed in what they could see. O’Brien knows this but only applies the concept when his comrade, Curt Lemon,
died. Mr. Obrien explained the concept of perception being warped very well, especially when he writes of Curt Lemons’ death. He wonders if Curt Lemon just felt himself being lifted up by the sunlight, and that was it. He said he saw his face, brown and shining, adding “when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms” (70) O’Brien continues and he says it’s difficult to separate what happened from what someone thinks happened: “What seems to happened becomes its own happening and has to be told that way.” (71) For example, if a scientist or someone who is logical instead of using the term ‘sunlight’ one might say something different, such as ‘the sulfur in the one-hundred fifty round booby trap ignited, sending about five-hundred degrees of heat into his body, flash-boiling his blood and organs, and instantly ending his life. The blast was so powerful that the force knocked him into the air, where his steaming corpse landed in a tree.’ That is another way someone could have narrated that part of this story. Then again, how the story is told highly depends on how much its teller has kept his/ her eyes open. O’Brien states that “when a guy dies, like Curt Lemon, you look away and then back for a moment and then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot, and then afterward, when you go tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but when in fact represents the hard and exact truth.” (O’Brien 71). This very act of looking away and filling in missing bits of a story with what is known and then calling it the truth is inevitable because of perspective. People can never really see eye to eye because of what each individual experiences in life. O’Brien’s conflict with the typical older woman illustrates this point. This woman, who was not in the war and has not had her heart hardened, says to a veteran that “as a rule she hates war stories” (84) and that he should just put it all behind him and try to tell happier stories. O’Brien then states that people cannot accept the truth as it is, and that someone will just end up placating them in order to make the truth acceptable and above all believable. The tendency is to use soft kind words, words that they can understand, but that compromises one’s perspective, and just creates a lie that masquerades as the truth. All of this is much like the story that I narrated in class during my group presentation. I talked about how, as a child, I was periodically blamed for things. Normally, I would be at one part of my house and my mother would seek me out. She would then ask me why I had stolen a cookie from the cookie jar. When I denied the accusation, she would proceed to send me to a corner as punishment. This would often happen, and, after a while, I just accepted it. That was until one fateful occasion I stood up for myself and asked her if she ever bothered to ask my sister, Demi. My mother did not interrupt. I continued to tell her my observations. Demi was perfectly capable of using a chair to get on top of the refrigerator to get a bowl for cereal, so she could easily have use a chair to get a cookie from the jar on top of the fridge. My mother walked away in silence and came back to me later and apologized for only suspecting me, and so, I gained a little self respect that day. What a load of first rate certified crap. This seemingly innocent story is riddled with lies that are meant to make the story a little less harsh and seem a little more truthful. Now, here is what I lied about. One, I lived in an apartment for many years, and it was not until we moved that I really stood up for myself. So this did not go on for months; it went on for years. There were no cookies. It was candy that my Grandma had shipped from Belize to the U.S. because my mom loved it. If I had said the name, “Tambrand,” only a few (if any) would be able to relate to the story. Also, it was not a simple timeout that I received. My momma whipped my ass. Finally, when she did ask my sister and came back down the stairs all she said was, “I was wrong.” Then she walked away with a frown on her face and nothing happened to my sister except she was told “don’t do that again.” There was no rise in confidence, nor any moral, just another page to be turned in the novel called “My Life”. So my little white lies turned this story of sadness and hard truth into one with a moral. However, because of my wanting to make everyone connect to it, I made it loose the impact it could have had. In my true story; there is no moral, it does not instruct nor encourage virtue, nor suggest a model of proper human behavior, nor restrain me from doing the things I have always done. There is nothing much to say except maybe “Oh.” Does this remind you of anyone? It does not matter whether it is my perspective of an event that leads to tricking you into believing one of my two stories or it’s a band of men retelling the death of their comrade, it is all the same. One’s perspective always creates different truths. I tried to retell a story like O’Brien; I also tried to connect it to a reader, but in the end I couldn’t stop my own personal perspective from skewing my story.
silence, sound seemingly carries forever. After a few days, the patrol members started to hear sounds that seemed like voices at a cocktail party, a glee club, and even an opera. Later, Sanders says to the narrator that he had lied about the man hearing the glee club and the opera, but that he had done so because otherwise the author would not have believed him. The narrator then asks, “Alright… what’s the moral?” (77), to which Sanders replies, after a long stretching silence, “Hear that quiet man... That quiet- just listen. There’s your moral” (77). It’s almost as though you have to lie to make the reality bearable because in silence even the most logical men could go insane. Can there be a moral in a true war story? O’Brien argues “in a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, its like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper morning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe ‘Oh’.” (77) In the beginning Mr.
O’Brien describes a solder called Rat and how he lost his friend. Rat had then mailed a letter to the guy’s sister. In the letter, he spills out his heart and soul, just talking about this man known as her brother and how great he was. She never replies, O’Brien then states that a true war story “does not instruct, nor encourages virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it.” (68). The question that comes to mind though is: What about the sister? O’Brien and Rat did not even know if the sister ever received the letter. They had sheer optimism that the letter made it safely to her home and that she read it. But because they needed to have faith in something, and this may as well have been the mail system, they blamed her when she could have been dead for all they knew. They only believed in what they could see. O’Brien knows this but only applies the concept when his comrade, Curt Lemon,
died. Mr. Obrien explained the concept of perception being warped very well, especially when he writes of Curt Lemons’ death. He wonders if Curt Lemon just felt himself being lifted up by the sunlight, and that was it. He said he saw his face, brown and shining, adding “when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms” (70) O’Brien continues and he says it’s difficult to separate what happened from what someone thinks happened: “What seems to happened becomes its own happening and has to be told that way.” (71) For example, if a scientist or someone who is logical instead of using the term ‘sunlight’ one might say something different, such as ‘the sulfur in the one-hundred fifty round booby trap ignited, sending about five-hundred degrees of heat into his body, flash-boiling his blood and organs, and instantly ending his life. The blast was so powerful that the force knocked him into the air, where his steaming corpse landed in a tree.’ That is another way someone could have narrated that part of this story. Then again, how the story is told highly depends on how much its teller has kept his/ her eyes open. O’Brien states that “when a guy dies, like Curt Lemon, you look away and then back for a moment and then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot, and then afterward, when you go tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but when in fact represents the hard and exact truth.” (O’Brien 71). This very act of looking away and filling in missing bits of a story with what is known and then calling it the truth is inevitable because of perspective. People can never really see eye to eye because of what each individual experiences in life. O’Brien’s conflict with the typical older woman illustrates this point. This woman, who was not in the war and has not had her heart hardened, says to a veteran that “as a rule she hates war stories” (84) and that he should just put it all behind him and try to tell happier stories. O’Brien then states that people cannot accept the truth as it is, and that someone will just end up placating them in order to make the truth acceptable and above all believable. The tendency is to use soft kind words, words that they can understand, but that compromises one’s perspective, and just creates a lie that masquerades as the truth. All of this is much like the story that I narrated in class during my group presentation. I talked about how, as a child, I was periodically blamed for things. Normally, I would be at one part of my house and my mother would seek me out. She would then ask me why I had stolen a cookie from the cookie jar. When I denied the accusation, she would proceed to send me to a corner as punishment. This would often happen, and, after a while, I just accepted it. That was until one fateful occasion I stood up for myself and asked her if she ever bothered to ask my sister, Demi. My mother did not interrupt. I continued to tell her my observations. Demi was perfectly capable of using a chair to get on top of the refrigerator to get a bowl for cereal, so she could easily have use a chair to get a cookie from the jar on top of the fridge. My mother walked away in silence and came back to me later and apologized for only suspecting me, and so, I gained a little self respect that day. What a load of first rate certified crap. This seemingly innocent story is riddled with lies that are meant to make the story a little less harsh and seem a little more truthful. Now, here is what I lied about. One, I lived in an apartment for many years, and it was not until we moved that I really stood up for myself. So this did not go on for months; it went on for years. There were no cookies. It was candy that my Grandma had shipped from Belize to the U.S. because my mom loved it. If I had said the name, “Tambrand,” only a few (if any) would be able to relate to the story. Also, it was not a simple timeout that I received. My momma whipped my ass. Finally, when she did ask my sister and came back down the stairs all she said was, “I was wrong.” Then she walked away with a frown on her face and nothing happened to my sister except she was told “don’t do that again.” There was no rise in confidence, nor any moral, just another page to be turned in the novel called “My Life”. So my little white lies turned this story of sadness and hard truth into one with a moral. However, because of my wanting to make everyone connect to it, I made it loose the impact it could have had. In my true story; there is no moral, it does not instruct nor encourage virtue, nor suggest a model of proper human behavior, nor restrain me from doing the things I have always done. There is nothing much to say except maybe “Oh.” Does this remind you of anyone? It does not matter whether it is my perspective of an event that leads to tricking you into believing one of my two stories or it’s a band of men retelling the death of their comrade, it is all the same. One’s perspective always creates different truths. I tried to retell a story like O’Brien; I also tried to connect it to a reader, but in the end I couldn’t stop my own personal perspective from skewing my story.