Name:_______________________________________
Creative Writing
"HOW TO TELL A TRUE WAR STORY"
by Tim O'Brien
In the interest of genre authenticity,
please accept apologies for profanity and crude language.
District policy prohibits our use of it, but in this instance we are allowed
to read it.
Major Writing Points in Telling War Stories
While reading underline or highlight O'Brien's comments about war stories that you find important. Be prepared to read to the class one or two sentences, whether mentioned on the sheet or not, that you found important. Also be prepared to report to class which story means the most to you in this chapter and why.
1. A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you fell uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude [moral uprightness, the quality or condition of judging correctly -Q ] whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.
2. And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that down spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.
3. In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.
4. In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn't, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness.
5. You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end. Not then, not ever.
6. In a true war story, if there's a moral at all, it's like the thread that makes the cloth. You can't tease it out. You can't extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there's nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe "Oh."
7. A true war story, if truth told, makes the stomach believe.
8. War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror, and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man, war makes you dead.
9. -and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly.
10. To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true.
There are several stories about Jack Lemon. Using the selections
A-D below, which one do you think most reflects craziness? _______
Which one do you think most reflects ugliness? _______
Which one most reflects holiness?___________
a. The truth: p. 78 and 84
b. A clever possibility - but not the truth: p. 69
c. An extracurricular event (letter to the sister): p. 67
d. The after-event - "Lemon Tree": 82