Analysis Of How To Tell A True War Story 'By Tim O' Brien

In Tim O’Brien’s THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, there is a chapter called How to Tell a True War Story. In this chapter, he states how you should never trust a “true war story” because many aspects go into a war story. He characterizes them; at the end of the day, you are the listener and should be skeptical. Ask questions and be curious.
The first characteristic is the persistence of memory. “In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.” A true war story persists in the narrator's memory. It becomes part of their identity and shapes their worldview. So for example, in the narration of Curt Lemons's death, O’Brien describes Curt’s death and how he remembers it. He describes the smell of explosives and the shock of the event in its entirety. He admits that he had looked away for a second so he didn’t get the full scene.

No one can see the entire dice at the same time. A true war story is multifaceted and cannot be reduced to a single narrative. It contains multiple layers of truth that reflect the complications of war. For Curt Lemon’s death, everyone had different aspects of how he died. Some only heard the detonator go off and see Lemon’s remains in the trees. Some had been watching the whole time. But no one person can tell you exactly what happened from each side. “Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.” In this contradiction, he is giving us the idea that absolute truth doesn’t exist. Truth comes from different perspectives. Many people can share the truth, but it will not be the same. We depend on others to feed us information on things we do not know. Whether or not they are being truthful you may not know. They may not know they are spreading