How to Tell a True War Story by OBrien, Tim - Book Report/Review Example

Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” interrogates the significance and plausibility of narrations that recount war experiences. It reminds one of the philosophical arguments of Friedrich Nietzsche with regard to the concept of truth in his essay “On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense”. Even as O’Brien brings in a war story presented from different angles in a seemingly simple narration, he deconstructs the entire concept of truth in them. The scattered narrations are interspersed with philosophical observations which seem to make it a metafictional work. Nietzsche’s precepts can in fact be brought in directly to analyze the issues raised by O’Brien. The concept of truth remains an ambiguous one, even after centuries of introspective inspection on it from many philosophers. Friedrich Nietzsche, who scorned the abundance of European theories related to the nature of truth and reality that have come especially from England and Germany, tries to bring in some unique reflections on the topic in his essay. Defying the necessity to define truth, he rather deconstructs the concept of truth, emphasizing the deceptive, self-conceptual existence of humans and their understanding of the world. O’Brien’s attempt is to delimit his analysis of truth to war stories. He observes that “[I]n any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way”. Recounting the death of a young soldier named Curt Lemon and the responses to it by a few other soldiers, including his best friend Bob Kiley aka Rat, and comrades Mitchell Sanders and the narrator himself. What links O’Brien’s observations on the possible narrations of a true war story with Nietzsche’s views is the skepticism that prevails. Nietzsche develops in his essay the idea of human existence and survival in relation to the concept of the deceptive nature of truth, or reality, in the time-space configuration they inhabit. It begins with a putative reference to the diminutive, momentary, insignificant nature of the place human beings inhabit in this universe, which they ironically perceive to be a gigantic, everlasting, all-consuming one. The nature of truth, when one attempts to perceive it in a hypothetical stance that transcends the here and now is a relative one, always constructed in a subjective conceptual framework. The desperate attempts of those who try to narrate a true war story have to fight with these aspects related to one’s self-importance and authenticity within the narrative. The way in which the narrator recounts Rat’s strange state of mind that led to the savage shooting of a baby buffalo is replete with the fictitious and magical elements that try to transcend the truth. Even as O’Brien strikes hard the point that a war story lacks a moral or cautionary significance, he maintains that it is very important to focus on the craft of such narrations and their immense effects on the reader/listener. Rat was the most upset among those who witnessed the death of Curt Lemon, which evokes several responses from the soldiers. They find a baby water buffalo, and though perplexed by its presence in a place where there were no agricultural fields, they chase it down, tie a rope around it and bring it to the village where they camped. Rat tries at first to entice the baby buffalo with their C rations, pork and beans, and when it does not show any interest in it, he cold-bloodedly shoots it to death. He shoots the animal on several parts, and it does not make any significant sound as it struggles to stand up again and again. He destroys the animal brutally, part by part, and every soldier just witness the scene benumbed. After this incident, Rat writes an impassioned letter to Lemon’s sister, mentioning the inanities of war and how he and her brother made the most of it in their own ways. The complex state of mind that Rat had all through this is just suggested by the narrator and the insignificance of truth over metaphors is very well expressed through the buffalo’s story. The narrator recounts: “The rest of us stood in a ragged circle around the baby buffalo. We had witnessed something essential, something brand-new and profound, a piece of the world so startling there was not yet a name for it”. Here the aspect of truth in the story gives way to the profound experience that the soldiers were capable of undergoing, in their own different ways. According to Nietzsche, the way in which human intellect perceives truth is never in its entirety, but rather through “illusions” and “dream images”. “[T]heir eye glides only over the surface of things and see “forms”; their feeling nowhere lead into truth, but contents itself with the reception of stimuli…”. The means through which people try to define truth is also essentially arbitrary. In the attempt to translate sense perceptions to language, the essence of truth is lost, as language is just a means of conveying received wisdom, based on conventions. Thus, Nietzsche’s apprehensive query, “Is language the adequate expression of all realities?”. All meaning that can be created with the help of language is dependent on some ultimate quality. Language in itself cannot hold truth in its entirety. O’Brien is concerned with the way war stories form just a fragmentary aspect of intense experiences and profound revelations one gains from actively participating in a war. And it becomes very difficult to transfer the multidimensional truth associated with such experiences to someone who cannot even imagine what it is like to be in the warfront. Thus all war stories sound like lies, and in their desperation to make the listeners/readers believe what really happened, many war story narrators fall prey to exaggerated, metaphoric allusions. The subjective nature of truth is also a philosophical concern fro O’Brien. The responses to a single incident like the death of Lemon vary from person to person. Likewise, the butchery of the baby buffalo might have conveyed different thought perceptions to those who witnessed it. They could only imagine Rat’s state of mind, as it becomes very difficult for anyone to analyze or make sense of his action. Since war stories rarely contain any moral at the end, or even fail to generalize, they stand truly close to Nietzsche’s understanding of the transitory nature of truth. According to him, we obtain concepts like “honesty” “by overlooking what is individual and actual”, but there is the concept itself, based on an ultimate ideal which remains “inaccessible and undefinable for us”. The way in which restricted forms and images of truth are taken for granted as truth itself makes it impossible to focus on the truth. Nietzsche defines the conventionally understood idea of truth as follows: A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power, coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins. The story of the buffalo serves a metaphorical purpose in this sense, and it cannot be considered true. It can only be the representation of the narrator’s perception, just like the story cooked up by Mitchell Sanders to prove a few points. O’ Brien observes that “[T]he truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can’t help but gape at the awful majesty of combat”. Much like the revelatory observations on truth in general by Nietzsche, O’Brien concludes the narrative with a few thoughtful perceptions. He says that “[I]n war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it is safe to say that in a true war story nothing much is ever very true.” What one tries to describe and pass off as truth in a war story may be just attempts to convey the deep experiences one underwent in a war. Thus the death of Lemon, Rat’s letter to Lemon’s sister and the killing of the baby buffalo – all these form metaphors rather than truth. Nietzsche’s observation that truth can only be perceived subjectively in relation to the temporal, spatial and numerical elements in the domain of metaphor reveals how difficult it is to break the barriers toward the attainment of truth. Since O’Brien exhibits a clear understanding of the convoluted aspects of truth involves in war stories, the entire story can be compared to Nietzsche’s precepts on truth. Works Cited Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”. November 2, 2007. O’Brien, Tim. “How to Tell a True War Story”. November 2 2007 Read More