Assigned Topic Week Eight

This is a very interesting topic. I really do not know what to write about.  In analyzing "How to Tell a True War Story" there are a couple of definition that I have found.  One of the definitions I have found is that the definition of a true war story does not mean that the facts are correct, but the definition comes from the partial memory of a battle that has happened many years ago; back when men were running on adrenaline and their perception is skewed.  O'Brien reinforces these thoughts when he writes, "Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn't, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness" (71). I take this quote as meaning that the men living the story can't even process the true realization of what is happening, but in order to relive the situation they must add in things that did not happen in order to get the full effect. 

 There are a couple of other definitions that I have found in the chapter, the first one states; "You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end. Not then, not ever" (O'Brien 76). O'Brien   is not actually speaking of  telling the story, but he is referring to the story that keeps on playing in his mind, day after day, night after night. The final definition of a story is what O'Brien explains as, "You can't extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there's nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe "Oh"(77).  What I get from this is that there is no other way to take a war story besides for what it is. He is saying that war is not a cartoon, its not make believe, its a war, there is no moral, there is no meaning, there is no end. 

Susan Farrell, the author of "The Literature of the Vietnam War" article gives several perspectives on how war stories are told. One of her perspectives speaks of "atrocity" she writes "How does one write about atrocity?" (5). This leads into the conclusion of the modern vietnam writer by saying they write in a disorderly, ambiguous, or chaotic manner. When she speaks of how Vietnam writers do not really have a structured way of writing, I interrupt this in a couple of different ways; the first is that Vietnam writers can not put together the meaning of battles or the actual meaning of the war, the second is that Vietnam writers do not want their stories to have structure because Vietnam was not structured, it was ambiguous, they just wanted to survive. 

 I put all of these definition into one chapter, "The Man I Killed", O'Brien keeps lamenting on features of the man he killed in this story, O'Brien states, " His jaw was in his throat... his fingernails were clean, the skin at his left cheek was smooth and hairless... his neck was open to the spinal cord" (124). O'Brien is detailed in explaining all of the features of this dead man. There is no point for him to us all of this detail, there is no meaning all of this detail is ambiguous in explaining the battles or the war. Kiowa tries to help Tim by rationalizing and giving a purpose to this man's death, but the further Tim thinks about it the more he laments on the features of the dead man.  As O'Brien is moving on, Kiowa is explaining that all he needed was "some metal R&R". But was there really mental R&R when O'Brien is staring at a man he killed or was that just him losing his since of feeling. 

How can you find meaning