Tell A True War Story Literary Analysis

How do you decide what is true and what is false? In war the line blurs even more. We hear war stories and wonder about the truth of these stories. We love to believe the stories of heroism and bravery. Now how do we know that these stories are real and not created propaganda? The Things They Carried by Tim O?Brien is a fiction book that shines some light on war stories. This complex book focuses on a complex war. The Vietnam War was complex for the reasons surrounding it. Some of the reasons were; the question why we were over there, governments that told half truths on what was going on, and the style of fighting was totally different compared to the past wars. This new style is called guerrilla warfare. O?Brien writes stories that make you
believe that they are real, but the book is fiction.
In ?How to Tell a True War Story? he gives his rules on telling a real war story, and maybe help us clear up some of the false stories about the war. I will take some of these rules and stories to prove if they are real or not.

One of O?Brien?s stories is ?Church?. This is a true war story because it has nothing to do with the war, but deals with two men?s thoughts on religion. One of the rules O?Brien said is ?A true war story is never about war?(83) proves that this is true. A true war story is about embarrassment, memory, sorrow, and love. (O?Brien) It?s about the land and the hump. An example is in WWII when the U.S.A. dropped the atomic bomb. It?s not about the dropping of the atomic bomb, but about the thoughts and struggles in the minds of the crew who dropped the atomic bomb, or it?s about the kid forty years later who still is affected from the nuclear blast. Now ?Church? is about the soldiers who set up a base of operations for a week in a partly abandoned pagoda. A pagoda is a temple used to worship a god. Two monks live there who were peaceful men. Kiowa, one of the soldiers who carries the New Testament with
him, says ?It?s bad news?You don?t mess with churches?(O?Brien 119). Kiowa believed you don?t set up base inside a church. Kiowa and Henry Dobbins talk about religion during their time there. This story is not about war although it?s in war, and they use the church as a base. Kiowa and Dobbins talk of their church experiences, and Dobbins talk about his thought of becoming a minister. This story is about the religion each believes in. Dobbins just wanted to be nice to people, but war change him. Kiowa on the other hand carries his Bible around, but his faith is more like a blanket or refuge. It is just what he grew up with. A big part of this story is the contradiction that they are in a church, but they are in a war using the church as a base. War is not about morals. Like Dobbins says after the monks left after they finished clean his machine gun ?You?re right?All you can do is be nice. Treat them decent, you know??(O?Brien 123). So you can see that war isn?t about war; it is about each person?s morals and beliefs.

In war you expect death from gunfire or enemy weaponry, but in the story ?In the Field? the enemy was the land. ?In the Field? is the story where Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and the men face a death from the unknown. Jimmy Cross ordered the men to set up camp next to the Song Tra Bong River. Even though he knew this was going to be a problem. It was raining which caused the river to over flow. Two locals had warned him that it was a bad spot, and part of him knew that he should of gone to higher grounds, but he was following orders. During the night mortar rounds went off hitting near Kiowa who was sucked down into the marshy ground. The mortar round was shot because a young kid, name unknown, turned on a flashlight to show a picture of his girlfriend to Kiowa. Kiowa died that night. He died in a field known as a shit field. As Azar said, ?Wasted in the waste?A shit field. You got to admit, it?s pure world-class irony.?(O?Brien 165). This is a true war story, ??It never seems to ends?(O?Brien 76) and ??Makes the stomach believe?(O?Brien 78). It is a story that you feel again and again. You feel different emotions from Kiowa death (sadness), to the blame many felt for Kiowa?s death (guilt), to the helplessness as friends search for Kiowa (anxiety), to their reaction when they finally find Kiowa. Jimmy Cross was extremely weighed down for the death that he knew he could have changed. He feels the need to write Kiowa?s father and tell him that he is to blame. The boy felt a responsibility for the death of his new friend. He knew his flashlight made the mortar rounds come. He hears the screams of Kiowa. In the morning he could not tell Jimmy Cross the real story of what happened. All he did was look for his girlfriend?s picture, for he knew Kiowa was dead. The boy kept on looking for his picture. After Jimmy Cross said he could get another one, but the boy knew he couldn?t because it was not his girlfriend anymore and she wouldn?t send him another one. Your stomach turns as you see Kiowa being described when they pull him out. His shoulder is missing, arms and cheek are cut up with shrapnel, and he is covered in bluish green goop. Norman Bowker tells everyone that there is no one to blame. Jimmy Cross thinks this in his mind, ?You could blame the war. You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy. You could blame the mortar rounds?You could blame God.?(O?Brien 177). The story never ends because it causes Tim O?Brien to come back to the spot with his daughter. The story never ends because it is the crazy stuff that keeps it alive in them.

Throughout war, soldiers are changed by the war. ?You can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil?(O?Brien 69). This is one of O?Brien rules for telling a war story. The violence seen by the soldiers, and the morality vanishes once they enter war. This affects the lives of the soldiers so much so that they realize at the end that they have changed. This change is usually toward the evil acts of humans. It makes sense that evil and obscenity affect the soldiers since they are in a place where there are no rules and no morals. Soldiers are in a way brought down to an animal instinct were you or your enemy stays. In Iraq some of the prison guards have done very malicious acts against the prisoners. The environment changed these guards by bringing them to do these acts. An additional fact is not all of these guards were men some of them were women. This is not expected from our guards by military standards or public morals especially from females.

?The Ghost Soldiers?
reveals this type of evil or obscenity in the life of Tim O?Brien himself. This story starts with telling the stories of the two times O?Brien got shot. When he tells the stories he compares the different treatment he got from two different medics. The first shot was to the side, but Rat, the medic, immediately put a compress on it. Even though there was an intense battle going on, Rat went to him four times to change his compress and to check on him. O?Brien got back twenty-six days later, but Rat was gone, and a new medic fresh from home took over Rat?s place. His name was Bobby Jorgenson. O?Brien?s second shot was to the buttocks, but unlike Rat, Bobby was slow and terrified by the event. This poor treatment caused a few things. O?Brien was relieved of active duty because of the poor treatment of his gun wound. It caused him some embarrassment because the nurses and other soldiers teased him. This caused O?Brien?s hatred for Bobby. When the Alpha Company came to the base O?Brien was at, they partied and told stories. But all O?Brien could think about was Bobby. He repeatedly asked people where he was, but they told him to drop it. His hatred grew while they were there. He eventually planned what was to be a joke on Bobby, to scare him. He teamed up with Azar who is probably the most immoral person in the Alpha Company. While they were playing the joke, O?Brien breaks down because he knew what he was doing was immoral and childish. The thing is O?Brien
was so deep in his hatred and his own evil that his true self was hidden deep inside himself. The revenge was eating at him. ?There was that coldness inside me. I wasn?t myself. I felt hollow and dangerous?(O?Brien 207). He knew his actions were cruel, but he was aliened with revenge, evil and obscenity. This is what made the story real.

O?Brien?s stories are easy to believe. The way he describes events. You feel like you are there. He is a great storyteller considering that most of this is factually fake. He writes to show people the other side of war that we might not have seen. His experience from being in Vietnam really shows people the other side of Vietnam. In war we look for heroism and bravery to be the models of soldiers, but it seems that war is not that. It is more survival of your own emotions as you see and experience war and death. I have not been to war so I don?t fully know.

Work Citied O?Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1990.