A True War Story Analysis

A true war story can be defined in many ways. It could be defined as a story that describes real events that happened to soldiers, or a story that . In the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, a true war story has many definitions, but they all have one thing in common, “A true war story is never moral” (O’Brien, 68). In order to understand what makes a true war story, one must first understand what is war and stories, how can these things be both true and untrue, and how does the author and reader play a part in the story.
In order to understand how to tell a true war story, we need to understand what a war story is and how it relates stories to war. War can be described in many ways and has different aspects. There are also …show more content…
A true war story tells the reader about an experience. The story does not show or tell the reader, but teaches the reader truths about what it is like to live in a war. O’Brien describes the term “A true war story” in many ways. One way he describes it, is that, “A true war story is never about war” (O’Brien, 85) What this means is that a true war story is the opinion and perspective of the narrator. The narrator has had an adventure and an story. A true war story isn’t about what happened and the facts, it is about the experience and adventure that comes with a …show more content…
After telling a war story, O’Brien ends the story by saying, “That’s a true story that never happened”(O’Brien, 84) This causes confusion from the reader. How can a true war story be true if it never happened? A true war story is true in how it is written, if the story holds a truth. If the author can make the reader believe that the story is true, then the story can become true, even if it never happened. How the reader feels about the war story is more important than the story itself. The details of the story do not matter because, “Absolute occurrence is irrelevant” (O’Brien, 83) The story only has to occur in the minds of the author and the reader to be true. The characters do not have to exist because outside of the mind nobody can go back in time to check the facts of the author. Nobody can question the experience of the author unless they are the author. In war a person loses their sense of reality and causes them to question what is true. This causes them to later forget what was true and what wasn’t, “In a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true” (O’Brien, 82) In war, a person loses their sense of reality and memory of what is true. People lose their understanding of truth because of the impact that war has. This causes war stories to become untrue. While details and thoughts may be true, the memory of war is often never true and