Man’s sins have always brought a twisted beauty to life. War is no exception. As the essence of life itself abides beyond mere words, constantly slipping away from our crude means of humanizing the world, so does war gain immunity to our human romanticism. In The Things They Carried, novelist Tim O’Brien makes a clear point of this in the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story.” O’Brien recounts his experiences through fiction in order to capture the feeling of war as accurately as possible, but the whole quality of war eludes capture nonetheless. Tim O’Brien shows us that the momentousness of war, as life itself, escapes romanticization and to embrace it as is becomes the only way of gaining insight on war’s true nature.
The quandary of telling …show more content…
By generalizing, we cut away the truth. “True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis. For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism seems to be perfectly true...War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love” (O’Brien 78, 80). Due to war’s immunity to generalization and abstraction, a true war story does not have a defined beginning or end. “ You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it” (O’Brien 85). It flows on and on as if a mighty river, both awe striking in its unfathomable beauty and revolting in its raw destructive power; but one cannot be without the other. Therefore, war must be embraced within the equilibrium of its qualities: “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued that war is grotesque, but it is also beauty...It’s astonishing...At its core, perhaps, war is another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life.” (O’Brien 81). Romanticization is required to bring across the point more powerfully, like when Mitchell Sanders tells a war story and adds a number of details to bring across the “raw force of feeling” (O’Brien 74), but the true essence of the story …show more content…
“A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe” (O’Brien 78). In order to feel, O’Brien tells us we must first listen. He illustrates this poignantly in two instances. This point comes up in Mitchell Sanders’ story about the listening post. In the story, a squadron goes up into the wilderness on a mountain to listen for enemy activity. They cannot talk or joke, they cannot make a single sound. They can only listen, and after a while they start hearing noises that drive them mad: noises of parties and people and celebration even though there is no one around. At the end of the story, Sanders says “‘Nobody listens. Nobody hears nothing...What they need is to go out on LP. The vapors, man. Trees and rocks - you got to listen to your enemy’...For a long time he was quiet, looking away, and the silence kept stretching out until it was almost embarrassing. Then he shrugged and gave me a stare that lasted all day. ‘Hear that quiet, man?’ he said ‘That quiet - just listen. There’s your moral.’” (O’Brien 76, 77). The second instance of this point comes up at the end of the chapter, when O’Brien tells us about how often times a woman would come up to him after he tells a story and tells him that she liked it and that he should move on and put it all behind him. “...she wasn’t listening. It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story...in the end, a true war
The quandary of telling …show more content…
By generalizing, we cut away the truth. “True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis. For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism seems to be perfectly true...War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love” (O’Brien 78, 80). Due to war’s immunity to generalization and abstraction, a true war story does not have a defined beginning or end. “ You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it” (O’Brien 85). It flows on and on as if a mighty river, both awe striking in its unfathomable beauty and revolting in its raw destructive power; but one cannot be without the other. Therefore, war must be embraced within the equilibrium of its qualities: “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued that war is grotesque, but it is also beauty...It’s astonishing...At its core, perhaps, war is another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life.” (O’Brien 81). Romanticization is required to bring across the point more powerfully, like when Mitchell Sanders tells a war story and adds a number of details to bring across the “raw force of feeling” (O’Brien 74), but the true essence of the story …show more content…
“A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe” (O’Brien 78). In order to feel, O’Brien tells us we must first listen. He illustrates this poignantly in two instances. This point comes up in Mitchell Sanders’ story about the listening post. In the story, a squadron goes up into the wilderness on a mountain to listen for enemy activity. They cannot talk or joke, they cannot make a single sound. They can only listen, and after a while they start hearing noises that drive them mad: noises of parties and people and celebration even though there is no one around. At the end of the story, Sanders says “‘Nobody listens. Nobody hears nothing...What they need is to go out on LP. The vapors, man. Trees and rocks - you got to listen to your enemy’...For a long time he was quiet, looking away, and the silence kept stretching out until it was almost embarrassing. Then he shrugged and gave me a stare that lasted all day. ‘Hear that quiet, man?’ he said ‘That quiet - just listen. There’s your moral.’” (O’Brien 76, 77). The second instance of this point comes up at the end of the chapter, when O’Brien tells us about how often times a woman would come up to him after he tells a story and tells him that she liked it and that he should move on and put it all behind him. “...she wasn’t listening. It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story...in the end, a true war