The Truth About War Stories, James Aguilar [highly illogical behavior .TXT] 📗

ancient Egypt, dreams were categorized as images. People that are known to read images were used to interpret the dream. One famous dream that a pharaoh had was the image of seven skinny cows and three healthy sheaves of grain. An interpreter was called in to read the images to the pharaoh that day. The man read that the image of seven skinny cows meant that the Nile was heading for a drought for seven years. The three healthy sheaves of grain meant that the drought would arrive in three years. The pharaoh trusted the interpretation of the images and gathered enough food to last for the seven years of drought. In modern days, images are use to show the reader a meaning just like in ancient Egypt. O’ Brien says, “And yet right here, in the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see her as if through ice, as if I’m gazing into some other world . . . I can see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and curt Lemon, and . . . Timmy skating with Linda” (245). The other world is an image of his memories. Through the ice he sees all his friends lost in death. The narrator says, “At the girl’s throat was a necklace of human tongues” (110). Mary Anne is wearing an unusual necklace of human tongues. The necklace is an image of Mary’s personality change. It is like the evil side that would never appear in a person took over. O’Brien shows that in war anything can happen. He uses images to prove it. Vince Passaro says, “Images are the figurative language, especially metaphors and similes, used in novels and other literary works” (Passaro). Images are use to make literature come alive. Anyone can get confused with reading simple wording. Images are unique because they are universal. Postmodernism is used in this novel.

Another style in literature is Postmodernism. This technique is use to blend fiction with nonfiction. This type of literature is often self-aware and comments on itself. Tim O’Brien fuses fantasy with fact. In this novel there are two types of facts; they are story facts and happening facts. Of coarse happening facts in this story do not exist because the novel is invented to explain what makes a true war story. Story fact is real in the story. In the chapter “On the Rainy River,” the narrator blends past, present, and future together. Tim O’Brien says, “A hallucination, I suppose, but it was as real as anything I would feel. I saw my parents . . . and Abraham Lincoln, saint George. There was a slim young man I would one day kill with a hand grenade along the village of My Khe” (59). The narrator sees Abraham Lincoln and Saint George. This vision happened during the Vietnam War. So it is highly impossible for a dead president and a Saint to be along with people of the future. Tim O’Brien combines the past with future to create postmodern techniques. The narrator says, “Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it . . . you’re at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You’re twenty-one years old . . . there’s a hard squeezing pressure in your chest (56). Tim O’Brien uses this style of writing to reveal the reader how it feels to be drafted during the Vietnam War. He desires the reader to share what it feels to have feelings of betrayal or loyalty. Twenty-one years of age was the average called for war. Children were summoned to be killing machines. Most of the soldiers did not know the reason why they were there in the field of blood and death. Sylvia Martin states, “Postmodernism is a very new technique used in literature” (Martin). Tim O’Brien uses postmodern techniques to unearth feelings before war. Emotions, feelings and memories are the primary factors that make a true war story.

A true war story is not patriotic; it emphasizes wars’ deepest fears. The Vietnam War is very similar to the one the U.S faces in Iraq and Afghanistan. American soldiers encounter guerrilla tactics. The tactic is very confusing. Many American combatants do not know who the enemy is or looks like. Just like in the war in Vietnam, U.S Marines go to every village and strip search everyone. The purpose is to find weapons and disguised enemies. Mothers in Iraq and Afghanistan would not hesitate to train their children to kill. Middle Eastern kids do not know the reason why they have to fight. In their opinion Americans are the heroes. So they fight not only a war but with their judgment. This is the deepest war secret. Before joining the arm forces the young American adult is happy. The training is easy and vigorous. When the soldier steps on enemy grounds the war horrors begin. Death changes American soldiers’ minds and souls. If their conscience allows it they start loving taking enemy lives. If the conscience does not allow seeing death, hatred begins building against war and everyone in it. They start hating sand in their boots and fighting ghosts. U.S soldiers begin detesting sand storms because after it is over the ghosts come. The ghosts then start shooting and bombing. The desert and the oil beneath it start receiving blame for all the nightmares. In the day time American soldiers fight a war, but at night they battle horrific dreams. War dreams hunt U.S Marines down because the dead come back to life. Lastly American veterans hate leaving without their friends and brothers. Detestation grows in the heart for leaving them because soldiers fight together in a war. U.S Army veterans come home and hate leaving them because they are dead. Soldiers’ friends and brothers do not have the chance to come home. They stay lifeless in the hot desert of Iraq or the mountains in Afghanistan. Tim O’Brien survives the Vietnam War, but his mind stays in combat. Iraq veterans come home, but their conscience is still in that flaming desert. Nothing has change from the past and present. Certainty it would not be different in the future. Most war veterans who survive tell a true war story without omitting emotions, memories, and terror.


A True War Story Works Cited

Berthoff, Warner. "American Realism: A Grammar of Motives." The Ferment of Realism: American Literature, 1884-1919. New York: The Free Press, 1965. 1-47. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Lynn M. Zott. Vol. 120. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 1-47. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009 .

Blyn, Robin. "O'Brien's The Things They Carried." Explicator. 61.3 (Spring 2003): 189. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 211. Detroit: Gale, 2006. p189. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 29 Apr. 2009 .

Carson, Susan. "Modernism." Hecate. 30.1 (May 2004): p176. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009 .

Chen, Tina. "'Unraveling the Deeper Meaning': Exile and the Embodied Poetics of Displacement in Tim O'Brien's The Thing They Carried." Contemporary Literature. 39.1 (Spring 1998): 77-97. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano. Vol. 74. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 77-97. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009. .

Horner, Carl. "Challenging the Law of symbolism and Heroic Identification in Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried." WLA: War, Literature & the Arts. 11.1 (Spring-Summer 1999): 256-267. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed.

Joseph Palmisano. Vol. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009 .
Martin, Sylvia. "Postmodernism." Hecate. 18.2 (Oct. 1992): p126. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009 .
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.

Passaro, Vince. "The Things They Carried and Imagery." Harper's Magazine. 299.1791 (Aug. 1999): p80. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009 . Imprint

Publication Date: 02-15-2010

All Rights Reserved