Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” starts with the brief tongue-in-cheek statement, “this is true.” While most authors seek to build credibility with their reader, O’Brien actively undermines his own trustworthiness in order to convey the skepticism with which he believes audiences should treat all ‘true’ war stories. His most effective strategy for doing so is the interweaving of a potentially fictitious narrative within a formal essay, further developing “How to Tell a True War Story’s” message of disillusionment with the attributes characteristically attributed to war and the dubious nature of war stories by creating a sense of suspicion and general distrust between the reader and the speaker.
As O’Brien interweaves narrative within his essay, such stories are …show more content…
Whereas one would expect war stories to be full of conflict, bold action, and nobility, O’Brien’s war stories are characterized by inaction, irrationality, and general depravity. Take for example the story of Rat’s friend, Lemon’s death: the story is told and re-told several times but as the story is re-told each time; Lemon’s death is glorified less and less until O’Brien describes “peeling him off” and how the “artillery blew him into a tree.” At first Lemon is presented as an angelic figure, but by the final re-telling he becomes a dumb kid who could not understand the realities of war. Ironically enough, even the speaker and his comrades seem uncapable of understanding death when they sing “Lemon Tree” as they pass around the parts of Lemon’s dismembered body. Such an ironic change in narrative conveys the general sense of disillusionment O’Brien must have felt after his experience in the Vietnam War; there is nothing of merit to say about a kid