How_To_Tell_a_True_War_Story_

How To Tell a True War Story' Can You Tell a True War Story' Tim O’Brien’s short story “How to Tell a True War Story” is his fictional depiction of one of the narrator’s experiences in the Vietnam War. This first person account of a tragic death of a friend is the example that the author uses to prove his theme of the impossibility of being able to actually express a true war story. By writing many separate narratives and then connecting them with a common theme, O’Brien uses an interesting literary technique to prove his point. It is the many retellings of the same basic event that gradually portray how difficult it is to write a war story and manage to express all that it contains. Interjected with each retelling are paragraphs describing what war stories are like and each additional section also proves the same point that telling a true war story is impossible. The plot line of the text is difficult to follow due to the scattered and separate sections included, but when carefully analyzed still conforms to the basic pattern of most literary works. The basic needed information was given in the beginning, by describing the strong friendship between story, war, true, narrator, stories, point, each, writing, write, theme, o’brien, never, lemon’s, lemon, first, event, difficult, death, back, about, way, very, telling, tell, separate, same, literary, last, impossible, gets, express, even, description, describing, basic, adds, work, truth, through, technique, slowly, short, sanders, right, rat’s, proves, prove, o’brien’s, one, new