"How to Tell a True War
Story" is not an easy story. As the reader, one feels continuously
antagonized by the narrator. This is because he completely reverts traditional
expectations of reader such as the reliable narrator and the triumph of
morality. Rather his stories are morally ambiguous forcing us to confront the
uncomfortable non romantic truth. For example in the story where Rat Kiley
writes a letter to console Curt Lemon's sister on his death, upon not receiving
a reply Kiley call her a 'dumb cooze'. When the reader learns about Kiley's
heart warming letter he or she is moved by the humanity of Kiley to still be
able to empathize despite being in such inhumane situations. The audience is
led to anticipate an equally moving response, however is abruptly met with
silence on the sister's part as well as Kiley's misdirected anger. This
shattering of the expectation demonstrates O'Brien's questioning of truth,
where he sees the embracement of the morally ambiguous a necessary factor of
understanding. Furthermore he is subverting the traditional medium of writing.
In addition
O'Brien deals directly with the notion of truth. In vein of post modernist
thought, he argues that truth is ambiguous, relative and contradictory. He uses
a wonderful metaphor where the morality of a story is like the thread
that makes up a cloth both are intrinsically related to one another and
impossible to distinguish. He also repeatedly contradicts himself and makes it
clear that narrative truth is not the same as emotional truth. He is
comfortable to contradict himself and thus illustrates the futility of truth
and story telling, a sense of skepticism that permeates post modernism..
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