HOW TO FIND TRUTH IN A WAR STORY?

• **Based on the descriptions, discussions, and vignettes in the chapter, what are the characteristics of a true war story? What does “truth” mean in the context of a war story? Consider the statement “That’s a true war story that never happened” and the characters’ various attempts to express the truth inherent in a particular story (“[Sanders’] frustration at...not quite pinning down the final and definitive truth”, “You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it”): **The “truth” in the context of a war story is based both on perspective and the exaggeration of both the mundane and the incredible. The fact is, there’s not an “absolute truth.”, just metafiction.

  • Each soldier retells the story differently because they each lived it differently. A soldier who died from a misplaced grenade can be a hero in the eyes of a comrade, but an idiot in the eyes of a bystander. The mundane and “silly” is considered to be more comforting, more of a safeguard than a trivial or absurd occurrence, while the most horrifying, unbelievable, and crude “facts” are more reliable and expected.

  • The truth of war is created and never exact. Subjective to the audience’s expectations and soldiers’ emotional experiences.

  • “A true war story is not about courage and heroism but about the reality of misplaced anger and the inability of soldiers to deal effectively with their feelings about a horrible experience.”

• What truths about war does the story about the girl who didn’t write back to Rat Kiley express? Explain. Consider the narrator’s comment that it was a love story, not a war story: War and grief are measured from the individual's perspective and emotions, influencing how they react to the situations and events presented.

  • Lemon's sister and Rat have different backgrounds, experiences, and expectations, and thus have different interpretations of the story; there is a significant difference in how they understand and feel about the "real" events of the war. The characters’ characterization reveals that the view of war is subjective and dependent on the emotionality of the circumstances.

  • In this case, Kat found it unacceptable that Lemon's sister would not return the letter because the letter represented an important part of Lemon's relationship with Curt and the events that strengthened their relationship, the letter represents Rat's integrity in his personal relationships, and most importantly, one of the aspects that kept him sane during the war.

  • While this was his interpretation of the "truth," Lemon's sister saw it from a different perspective because she did not witness the horrors Rat did, and was only affected by the letter's brutality and obscenity. For her, it was an overly crude depiction of the horrors faced in Vietnam, not an account of her brother's emotional importance, and her response to that fact was not to respond to the letter.

  • Finally, O'Brien retells one side of the war based on differences in experiences and interpretations of what is considered "true." Rat believes she does not understand the true meaning of the story, which is Rat's fraternal love for Lemon, because she belongs to a different interpretive community. However, from the sister's point of view, her response was to walk away from Rat's obscenity, leaving as a moral that the only truth in war is the perspective and emotion evoked in the reader.

DEATH AND CRUELTY

• What truths about war does the story about Curt Lemon’s death express?: O'Brien continues to question the subjective role of truth in war, arguing that there is a fine line between "what happened" and "what seemed to happen," leaving everything to the narrator's perspective.

• It is difficult to know the truth about his death with certainty, owing to the untrustworthy narrator, who appears to rely on his feelings and the embellishment of a bizarrely tragic, stupid, and crude event. Curt Lemon's death exemplifies how the truth of a war is determined by the people affected by it and their experiences with it; it's all a matter of perspective and what you want to see.

• This is the case of the narrator, who first recounts Lemon's death from a beautiful and symbolic perspective, with the sunlight providing a very subtle clue to the true cause of his death. While he was attacked by a grenade, it is later revealed that he was blown to pieces and that the light that absorbed him was the light and impact of the grenade on Lemon, according to the narrator.

• Finally, the truth is a collection of what each individual wants to believe and see in order to paint a picture in his head, possibly for his comfort. Curt's death also depicts the position of lost innocence and the goat-like consequences of war, as described as two children playing in dangerous territory, with Lemon's innocence fading as he becomes more immersed in the horrors of war.

• What truths about war does the story about the baby buffalo express?: The war is heinous and evil, tainting all traces of innocence and purity. The buffalo scene is one of the most impressive parts of the story, not only because of its description and explicit imagery, but also because of the raw emotions it evokes in the reader.

• It feels like a punch in the stomach and leaves a bittersweet breath, like war. The aggressive manner in which Rat exacts revenge on his best friend over an innocent animal not only demonstrates the character's only way of gaining control over his environment and constraints but also demonstrates how the soldiers have gradually lost their humanity as a result of being immersed in so much violence.

• The animal is unfortunately vulnerable to Rat's power, his "massacre" demonstrating the death of the purity that people lose as they grow up, an innocence that cannot be regained. War is a powerful and evil force, and even the most innocent suffer its consequences. Nothing can erase the horrors it leaves behind, and when a life is lost, many things are lost as well.

CONCLUSION

• A true war story is never about war because it is about the feelings and emotional consequences of war on the people who are involved in it, not the actions and horrors of war.

• It is not about weapons or bombs, but about the pain and sorrow that a death brings, or the difficult moments when there appears to be no solution.

• War is about crying, feeling, and instinct, not mechanics or actions, which is why a true story is about the feelings recreated by the raw situations you read about, about the sensations, and images that stay in your head and heart, and inevitably, only about the emotional process.