How To Tell A War Story Analysis

To Tell or Not to Tell a War Story Phil Klay and Tim O’Brien are two very distinct war authors. Klay was a marine during the Iraq war, and O’Brien was an infantryman in the Vietnam War. Although the wars they were in are vastly different, they each have a story that focuses on the act of telling war stories. O’Brien’s story is “How to Tell a True War Story” from The Things They Carried, and Klay’s story is “War Stories” from Redeployment. However, the significance of telling war stories for each heavily contrasts each other. While the meaning of “War Stories” is do not tell war stories because no one will understand or listen to them anyway, the message of “How to Tell a True War Story” is to try to perfect the act of telling the story in …show more content…
He tells a story about how in a moment of grief Kurt Lemon’s best friend, Rat Kiley, shot a baby water buffalo repeatedly, and then started crying (O’Brien, 75-76). After O’Brien tells the buffalo story to an elderly woman, she replies that he should “put it all behind” him and find “new stories to tell” (O’Brien, 81). Then O’Brien realizes that “she wasn’t listening”, and he tells “it one more time, patiently adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth.” (O’Brien, 81). Retelling is all he can really do if he wants others to understand the emotional impact war has on those that take part in it. This is not only a key difference between him and Klay but also between the two wars that the authors were …show more content…
For example, the Vietnam War was one of the first wars to allow the press to capture it. The new introduction of media resulted in the civilian perspective being less skewed for the Vietnam veterans than it was for the Iraqi veterans. Because of this, O’Brien may have had an easier time telling his stories. Unfortunately, by the time Klay served, there was plenty of existing media depicting war in the most gruesome way possible through isolated incidents. Therefore, the people listening to the stories already have a stereotypical idea of what they should be. Another key difference between the two wars was the draft. The Iraq War was composed solely of volunteers whereas the Vietnam War had a draft. As a result, there were “2.7 million men conscripted from every segment of society” during the Vietnam War, but “less than one-half of 1% of the U.S. population is in the armed services today” (Zucchino). Due to the lower numbers of troops in the Iraq war, the Iraq veterans may have felt very isolated from their peers compared to the Vietnam veterans, hence Klay’s war story attitude. Their feelings of isolation are extremely valid. “49% of the 1.3 million active-duty service members in the U.S” are stationed in merely five states: California, Virginia, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia (Zucchino). As a