War soldiers commonly suffer
from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is an anxiety disorder that
can occur after you have gone through an emotional distress that involves
threat and death. In the short story, “How to tell a true war story,” author
Tim O’Brien constantly used repetition and contradiction as a style of writing
in order to convey his experience about the wars and its stories. After reading
this story, I felt that his war stories were very self-contradictory. It seemed
like these soldiers who he mentions in his stories were living their lives in
an edge, where the difference between reality and fantasy were no longer
recognized due to the vivid intensified circumstances they faced everyday in
their lives. O’Brien constantly mentions about Lemon (soldier) and how he died
while goofing around with smoke grenades with Rat Kiley, who was Lemon’s best
friend. The way O’Brien portrayed his death in the story, seemed like he was
constantly replaying Lemon’s death in his mind and how the sunlight made
Lemon’s face shine that his death seemed almost beautiful. In my opinion, I believe that O’Brien started
to go through the psychological repercussion of post traumatic stress disorder,
after he visualized Lemon’s death through his own eyes. Even twenty years later, O’Brien can still
remember the sunlight and how it lit up Lemon’s face proving the existence of
PSTD in his life as the incident keeps on playing in O’Brien’s mind over and
over again. Lemon and O’Brien hardly knew each other but as Rat Kiley was O’Brien’s
good friend, their relationship as comrades became more unified and loving. I actually found this story to be very
saddening. It almost felt like O’Brien was continuously trying to say something
very secretive and important about his war experience but ended up only
contradicting himself, as if he didn’t know what was the reality anymore.
I really liked what you had to say about the aspects of O'Brien's writing. The fact that O'Brien continually retells the story of Lemon's death indeed does shed light on his experience with PTSD. He is constantly reliving that event from the war. It constantly replays in his mind and comes back numerous times in one chapter. I also liked how you talked about the blurred line between reality and fantasy. Indeed it seems like the lines would be blurred because of the horrifying events the soldiers experienced during the war. With regards to O'Brien trying to say something very secretive, I sensed that too as I read his writing. With the constant repeating of himself and his contradictory nature throughout the piece, O'Brien continually hits a roadblock as he tries to talk about how to write a war story.
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