How can someone tell a true story when it’s made up? O’Brien develops a scene where the facts hold less importance compared to what the reader feels. War is already hard enough to fathom, but when “the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t, the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness” (68). The next layer dives into the perception of the reader versus what O’Brien wants to show. Sometimes personal experience can misconstrue the original meaning; hence, by changing any bias of the story, every reader will better connect with the piece, but also understand that “you can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning” (74). The point is to “make [the] stomach believe,” because creating …show more content…
O’Brien leaves those last moments of Lemon’s life as “just goofing” around with a “soul mate.” The story could be pulled from this book and put into any situation since everyone’s story ends in death, going against O’Brien’s rule that, “there can be no generalizing in war” (83). Also, to find any moral in a story would eliminate the chances of it being a war story according to O’Brien. “Being in the midst of so much of evil makes you want to be good. Nothing seems permanent or absolute. There are no certainties;” That is the moral here (82). Even further, a soldier's whole life does not represent war because at some point, whether they are killed or survive, the war will still end. If Lemon’s death was just another war story, O’Brien would not have been able to talk so much about it; the scene would pass by as a fact with no meaning. The truth within the story is about how much love O’Brien finds at war when surrounded by all these men while they “cross the river and maybe even die,” they “[study] the fine colors of the river, [feeling] wonder and awe,” “aching love for how the world could be and always should be;” Even though “now is not,” the story ends with a “sun,” a “wide river turning pinkish red,” a “love [for] what’s best in yourself and in the world, [and] all that might be