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

“This is true” is repeated throughout Tim O’Brien’s Narrative Nonfiction short story “How To Tell a True War Story” with even the title being ambiguous in itself and readers get the opportunity to walk in the shoes of the each person with a war story. The structure of the story starts off with Rat writing a letter to his dead friend meanwhile showing an example of how to tell a true war story. O’Brien states “If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote.” ( O’Brien 67). Throughout the story, multiple testimonies (snapshots) were told by the narrator making the story more credible since the narrator is not an actual character within the story, therefore being unable to create

Readers can make a logical assumption that the main character is the griever and in this case the woman is grieving as she lets her son go to war knowing that the chances of him coming home to her are slim. This creates a suspenseful situation, the conflict is where grief is initiated. Her husband, who is sitting next to her, tries to better the problem with social grief by venting to other, random passengers in hopes of hearing an optimistic outcome. “And he felt it his his duty to explain to his traveling companions that the poor woman was to be pitied for the war was taking away from her her only son...” ( Pirandello 1934 ). It is important to know the significance behind the mother losing her only son opposed to the other families on the train lost multiple children. This mother has only had one child whom she pours all her love in whereas other families have poured their love into several children but still able to have at least one. This mother lost her son and all the love she had invested in him as well. If Pirandello had focused on another passenger’s grievance on the train, readers may have not sympathized as much for them as they do to the