In the article we read, the author states, "These first-person narratives usually tell anti-heroic stories which assert the moral ambiguity of...involvement...and deflate notions of patriotism or glory sometimes associated with war". I think this best tells the definition of a true war story. A true war story isn't going to talk about the patriotism and glory of the war; it's going to talk about the day-to-day activities of the soldiers and most of the time how unsure they are about the war and the things happening in the war. This goes along with Tim O'Brien's definition when he says, "A true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river...It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen" (85). Though war stories talk about war, it is not really about war. There are other aspects to the story other than the war itself. O'Brien also says that "a true war is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done" (68). A true war story isn't going to make war acceptable or make it unacceptable; a true war story is only going to tell the facts (from the narrator's perspective) without trying to sway the reader one way or the other. "If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie" (68-69). A true war story has no real point except to understand the narrator's feelings and perspectives of the war.
In the story "Ambush", O'Br
ien is talking about the man that he threw a grenade at which blew him up. Throughout the whole story, there is no moral to the story; O'Brien doesn't tell the reader whether it was justified or not to kill this man, only that he did, and he can't do anything about it. He tends to think about this boy a lot, but knows that there is nothing he can do about the past. At that time, something about him made O'Brien decide to throw the grenade. No where in the story does O'Brien justify his killing. This story was just another story that came into O'Brien's head. There was no moral and it wasn't about the actual war; it was about this kid and the whole situation of his death.
ien is talking about the man that he threw a grenade at which blew him up. Throughout the whole story, there is no moral to the story; O'Brien doesn't tell the reader whether it was justified or not to kill this man, only that he did, and he can't do anything about it. He tends to think about this boy a lot, but knows that there is nothing he can do about the past. At that time, something about him made O'Brien decide to throw the grenade. No where in the story does O'Brien justify his killing. This story was just another story that came into O'Brien's head. There was no moral and it wasn't about the actual war; it was about this kid and the whole situation of his death.
2 comments:
The quotes you used to support your thesis that a true war story is about the daily lives of the soldiers rather than the war itself were very insightful. They really targeted O'Brien's point of view on the matter. I think this way of writing war literature is especially common to the Vietnam War in particular. If you compare the way Tim O'Brien describes the war through anecdotes he remembers and the friends he made to the way Hemingway described the war in Italy, there are great differences. Hemingway gave a more clear picture of the progress the war was making as the novel evolved, whereas O'Brien's war seems to be standing stagnant in his memory.
Great post, Ashley and thanks also to Kim for the great follow up :)
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