"How to Tell a True War Story"

Summary: I chose to write about the chapter "How to Tell a True War Story" because I read it agin and it had a different meaning to me. The first time I read it the story of Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon it was a sad story of two best friends that got sadly separated because of death and one of them went crazy. When I read it again to write my in class essay I realized that the author O'Brien explained a lot of his writing in this chapter. O'Brien talked about the happening truth and the story truth. The happening truth is what actually happened and the story truth is what he made up. He goes on to say that sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between two. The things that happened in Vietnam were too hard to talk about so sometimes it was easier to tell a story.

Response: I think that no matter what O'Brien writes about it will have an impact on his reader. Just because he does not tell us exactly how thing happened does not mean his readers did not get an understanding of how difficult it was to be in the war. O'Brien tells his readers that the truth you feel in your gut. I felt every story in the pit of my stomach and even though I was wondering what was true or wasn't by the end I did not care. I enjoyed reading the stories in the book The Things They Carried. It was interesting and it gave me a different outlook on the the soldiers that caught in the Vietnam War.