“How to Tell a True War Story”is a meta-literature according to what we learned in the first week's lecture. It is made up by several little stories.
I have to say that this essay made me confused, but what is obvious to get is that the author used thoses stories to argue against wars.
Curt Lemon was exploded and Rat lost a good friend because of the war. Those who doing listening-post operations cannot speak but listen to their enermy's movement in the mountain, which can be regarded as a torture to them. And the war made people cruel. Rat shoot the water buffalo and people felt amazing about it, rather than show empathy to the water buffalo.
Those were all brought by the Vietnam war. The war made people lose frendship, love and empathy. The author mentioned "a true story" for many times, but he also said "a true war story is never about war". It seems that those terrible stories are unbelievable, but they were all really happened in a war. That is how the author used those stories to convey an idea that wars are terrible.
Your response that this story is confusing is a good one. Perhaps this is the response O'Brien wanted. Or at least to prevent absolute definitions. Why might he resist absolute definitions?
回复删除