Tim O Brien's Wartime Stories

Wartime stories are often hard to tell in a narrative non-fiction piece due to the difficulties faced in said wartime conditions. Author Tim O’Brien attempts to address these issues in his novel The Things They Carried, which is a recollection of his war stories which are set in Vietnam. O’Brien’s method of circumventing the problems posed by relying on using imagination and invention to accurately display the truth, as he sees it. The concept of such can be seen in three chapters of the novel, “Good Form”, “How to Tell a True War Story”, and “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”. By critically assessing these three chapters, and the outlook of storytelling that they portray, O’Brien’s view on storytelling can be fully understood and comprehended.
According to O’Brien, “a true war story is never moral” (O’Brien 68). The war stories that have morals are often fabrications of the truth. The mark of a true war story is the difficulty in telling the difference between what happened and what seems like it happened. The details of a story can be vague, something that cannot be understood, and can still be considered a true war story. Believably of a war story must also be taken into account when discussing its credibility. Some scenarios, O’Brien says, are too far-fetched to be considered true, and yet those are the stories are the ones that could not be further from the truth. The author’s stance on this subject is that, “in many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical.”(O’Brien 71). A war story that is mundane is often times the ones that have falsities in them. As seen by Mitchell Sanders, it is his drive to make the other soldiers believe his story that makes it believable. O’Brien gives an outline of how to tell a proper war story in this chapter, so that the common pitfalls in storytelling can be subverted. He condones the seemingly useless nature of stories by saying that, “a true war story is never moral.”(O’Brien 68). It is less about the quality of the story and more about its accuracy of what seems like it happened, that separates a true war story from one that is
Throughout the three chapters, “Good Form”, “How to Tell a True War Story”, and “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, O’Brien highlights the effectiveness of interspersing the mundane and ordinary, as well as telling the truth as it seems, in storytelling. Emotion in a story can help the story in immense ways, by being more relatable, but having personal commentary or analysis is not. These two tenants are the cornerstone that O’Brien builds his thesis on for a proper war story. These concepts help to avoid issues such as a story not being believed and a story not flowing very well. O’Brien’s outlook on storytelling is to tell the story in its entirety, whether it be outrageous or plain. By doing as O’Brien describes the issues that crop up during storytelling can be resolved in their