Journal 4: “How to Tell a True War Story”

O’Brien explains that sometimes a true war story cannot be believed because the worst parts are absolutely true, but the normal parts of the story are not. He also explains that sometimes a true war story is impossible to tell. This influences the events of the rest of the book in that O’Brien himself is trying to tell a war story. It affects the reader’s perception of what actually happened and what O’Brien could have possibly made up or exaggerated, as well as those stories that are impossible to tell. It serves as a disconnection between the reader and the soldiers that were actually there. Since none of the readers actually witnessed anything that happened in O’Brien’s tale, it is unknowable whether it truly happened the way O’Brien tells it. O’Brien also notes that the significance of a true war story is whether you believe it in your stomach, and that a true war story can be identified by the questions one has after reading one. In this regard, O’Brien basically tells us that the truth of a true war story is whether you can identify with the person who lived or wrote it. O’Brien tries, even through something that could have been made up, to have the reader feel the same way he did when he was living through the war. The feeling you get in your stomach, he argues, is what is really important, even if the story isn’t true. The impact on the reader who reads the story is what is really important when you cannot tell if the story is absolutely true, regardless of the facts of the story. The death of the baby water buffalo was certainly more disturbing than the death of Curt Lemon because of the way O’Brien tells it. Instead of portraying the death of Curt Lemon as a violent death, he pays more attention to the sunlight and the beauty of what happened instead of the ugliness. I’m sure that if O’Brien described his death as a more violent and grotesque one, the death of the baby water buffalo would have had much less of an impact on me, the reader. This shows that O’Brien has control over the events of his story, as he can make what happened into any manner he pleases. O’Brien also notes that his story is a love story, not a war story. He says this due to the fact that soldiers like himself who tell war stories hyperbolize these tales because they love enthralling outside audiences to the way their lives were during the war in which they fought in. The idea of war enraptures their minds so much that they feel that inserting a few fallacies can become as real to them and outside audiences as if it had actually happened.