Literary Criticism: 'How to Tell a True War Story', by Tim O Brien
Warning for young audiences: the short story this article is
reviews contains crude profanity and graphic descriptions of violence.
“How to Tell a True War Story” is a short fictional work placed in the Vietnam War, starring character Tim O’Brien and written by veteran Tim O’Brien. From these facts alone, a major theme of the story is revealed: a blurred definition of reality and fiction. In “How to Tell a True War Story”, author O’Brien is caught in a metaphorical loop, telling the same story over and over again in different ways. This is the story of Curt Lemon’s death. It also includes other personal experiences from the war, such as the death of a baby buffalo, an unrequited love letter, and soldiers who hallucinate music. Tying these things together is a questioning exploration into what humanity is and what truth still exists during a war.
In Raymond Scurfield's book, Veterans and Post Traumatic Stress, he notes the enormity of damage caused to veterans alone from this brutal war. "A substantial number of the 3.14 million Vietnam veterans continue to have at least some of the major symptoms of PTSD decades after the war", he notes (202, Scurfield). This would make sense, considering the mass brutality caused: according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, almost two million civilians are estimated to have died in that war. This was not an experience that was easy on anyone. “How to Tell a True War Story” shows the traumatic effect of war, but it also shows that through fictional writing, healing truth can be accessed.
First, violent outbursts of secondary characters show the changing effect war has on the men. O'Brien shows the continuous violence perpetuated by Rat towards a baby buffalo, noting:
"He shot through the right front knee...an ear...the hindquarters...the little hump in it’s back...twice in the flanks...It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt. He...shot the mouth away... the tail...meat below the ribs...spurts in the belly and butt...in the nose...All the while the baby buffalo was silent." (War Story)
Interestingly enough, Rat is not introduced to the readers as a hardened character. In fact, he is first introduced as the writer of a love letter and the mourner of a friend. He has a soft heart, but the war has hardened him. Scurfield goes on to prove this point, explaining that traumatic experiences are "inherently rage producing" in his book (83). This is not the only negative effect of war experienced by O'Brien's characters.
Throughout this short story, there are also obvious symptoms of dissociation. At one point in “How To Tell a True War Story”, O'Brien states that when something traumatic happens, "you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself”.
This makes a lot of sense in the light of PTSD, according to author Terrance Keane. Dissociative symptoms include confusion, time slowing down, and a feeling of floating, just as described in the story (146, 148, Keane). Keane reports that during a traumatic event, one may have a "profound sense of unreality that the event is occurring....more like a dream, movie or play" (146, Keane).
This is something definitely seen in this short story. Indeed, as if talking about a drama, O'Brien says the "pictures tend to be jumbled", and he says the feeling he is trying to capture throughout the war is that of surreality. He follows up to say the "only certainty is ambiguity". O'Brien cleverly smudges the lines between reality and fiction in order to recreate, in the readers, these same unusual feelings that he himself experienced.
One thing evident in this short story is how contrasting memories and truths all hold some bit of reality in them. The author states his view of truth as a subjective one, saying, "one thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (O'Brien).
For example, the first time O'Brien imagines Lemon's death, he uses beautiful imagery, noting the way the "sunlight surrounded him" and how the tree he was rocketed into had "vines and white blossoms" (O'Brien). Later in the story, he describes Kurt's death for the second time, in a gory manner. “The parts were just hanging there. I remember the white bone of an arm...pieces of skin and something wet and yellow that must’ve been the intestines”, he recalls in startling, gory accuracy (O'Brien).
Telling these stories in graphic brutality and idealized glory captures what it truly seemed like to the narrator both in the moment and in memory. Mark Herbele, the author of A Trauma Artist: Tim O’Brien and the Fiction of Vietnam, argues that for veterans like O'Brien, writing these stories as fiction helps them "transcend the filth" (37, Herbele). This would explain, perhaps, why O'Brien told the story to include blossoming pure flowers and rays of enveloping light. That is a description which certainly idealizes death into a more beautiful thing.
Through his retellings, the author is able to access his own personal truth of what happened. At one point in Herbele's manuscript, he quotes O'Brien in an interview, who says storytelling is a way of making "art of the horror", and through constantly reliving the past (as he does in “How To Tell a True War Story”), one can hopefully "forge a new present" (37, Herbele). It therefore makes sense why O'Brian chose fiction to write his account. Through fiction, he has the freedom to make past memories into art and to make the future into one of newfound liberation despite the trauma that it took to get there.
Scurfield, Raymond M. A Vietnam Trilogy : Veterans and Post Traumatic Stress, 1968, 1989, 2000. Algora Publishing, 2004.
Heberle, Mark A. A Trauma Artist: Tim O'Brien and the Fiction of Vietnam. University of Iowa Press, 2001.
Keane, Terence. Assessing Psychological Trauma and PTSD. The Guilford Press. 2004.
Tim O'Brien. "How to Tell a True War Story." World Views: Classic and Contemporary Readings. West, Roger. New York: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2015. 172-183. Book anthology.
