Tim O Brien's How To Tell A True War Story

Point of view helps produce thematic meaning in Tim O’Brien’s short story, “How to Tell a True War Story” where the readers have to rely on the narrator’s story in order to understand what happened. The story is told in first-person limited point of view because it focuses on the narrator’s accounts as a soldier in the Vietnam War through the repeated usages of the word “I.” And it is also limited to a single person’s account of events. Because the story is told in first-person limited point of view, it makes the narrator unreliable as he may have excluded information or distorted the truth in order to make his war story sound action-packed out of a movie. The narrator starts off with the story by saying “this is true” but there is no evidence to support how true it is (O’Brien 488). The narrator, who makes the readers believe he is truthful, seems to be unreliable because there is no other way for us to assume …show more content…
The usage of dramatic irony is found throughout the story. The narrator’s idea of truth isn’t what the readers think, and he suggests that a true story doesn’t have to had previously occurred for it to be true. He assures the readers repeatedly that “it’s all exactly true,” even though there is no credible evidence to back that up (O’Brien 490). The narrator admits to re-telling the story to different people before, and told “many versions” of it, and still assures readers that it’s true (O’Brien 493). The made-up story is told to visually paint a picture to readers and anyone who has never experienced war what it’s like to fight and see death on a constant basis. O’Brien wants to evoke emotions in readers such as anger, sadness, and bravery so that way they can have an idea of what it’s like to fight in the