Tell A True War Story Literary Analysis

How do you decide what is true and what is false? In war the line blurs even more. We hear war stories and wonder about the truth of these stories. We love to believe the stories of heroism and bravery. Now how do we know that these stories are real and not created propaganda? The Things They Carried by Tim O?Brien is a fiction book that shines some light on war stories. This complex book focuses on a complex war. The Vietnam War was complex for the reasons surrounding it. Some of the reasons were; the question why we were over there, governments that told half truths on what was going on, and the style of fighting was totally different compared to the past wars. This new style is called guerrilla warfare. O?Brien writes stories that make you …show more content…
In ?How to Tell a True War Story? he gives his rules on telling a real war story, and maybe help us clear up some of the false stories about the war. I will take some of these rules and stories to prove if they are real or not.

One of O?Brien?s stories is ?Church?. This is a true war story because it has nothing to do with the war, but deals with two men?s thoughts on religion. One of the rules O?Brien said is ?A true war story is never about war?(83) proves that this is true. A true war story is about embarrassment, memory, sorrow, and love. (O?Brien) It?s about the land and the hump. An example is in WWII when the U.S.A. dropped the atomic bomb. It?s not about the dropping of the atomic bomb, but about the thoughts and struggles in the minds of the crew who dropped the atomic bomb, or it?s about the kid forty years later who still is affected from the nuclear blast. Now ?Church? is about the soldiers who set up a base of operations for a week in a partly abandoned pagoda. A pagoda is a temple used to worship a god. Two monks live there who were peaceful men. Kiowa, one of the soldiers who carries the New Testament with …show more content…
reveals this type of evil or obscenity in the life of Tim O?Brien himself. This story starts with telling the stories of the two times O?Brien got shot. When he tells the stories he compares the different treatment he got from two different medics. The first shot was to the side, but Rat, the medic, immediately put a compress on it. Even though there was an intense battle going on, Rat went to him four times to change his compress and to check on him. O?Brien got back twenty-six days later, but Rat was gone, and a new medic fresh from home took over Rat?s place. His name was Bobby Jorgenson. O?Brien?s second shot was to the buttocks, but unlike Rat, Bobby was slow and terrified by the event. This poor treatment caused a few things. O?Brien was relieved of active duty because of the poor treatment of his gun wound. It caused him some embarrassment because the nurses and other soldiers teased him. This caused O?Brien?s hatred for Bobby. When the Alpha Company came to the base O?Brien was at, they partied and told stories. But all O?Brien could think about was Bobby. He repeatedly asked people where he was, but they told him to drop it. His hatred grew while they were there. He eventually planned what was to be a joke on Bobby, to scare him. He teamed up with Azar who is probably the most immoral person in the Alpha Company. While they were playing the joke, O?Brien breaks down because he knew what he was doing was immoral and childish. The thing is O?Brien