How to Tell a True War Story by O’Brien

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important in the story because it begins to express how difficult it is to write a war story by stating, "a true war story is never moral".
The first attempt at expressing the story of Lemon's death is a very calm and beautiful description of the event. Under the shade of giant trees, the two guys were playing a simple childlike game and suddenly there was destruction. As Lemon stepped on a hidden mine, it was said, "it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up". The way he tells us about Curt Lemon's death he makes it as a love story. Even though there are horrible things, he describes the scene as beautiful, focusing on the sunlight rather than the gore. Blood and carnage are never discussed, not even when O'Brien and Dave Jensen are forced to cut of the tree in order to get down Curt Lemon's body parts. The way O'Brien describes this action, and the death in general, is unspecific and detached. His storytelling functions as a salve that ...

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of the Alpha Company are effectively soldiers turned storytellers, O'Brien and Sanders take their role as storytellers more seriously than the rest. Ironically, Sanders's best piece of advice-to get out of the way and to let the story tell itself-is one that both he and O'Brien ignore. When he inserts himself into his story about the soldiers who hear voices, Sanders gets in the way, with his comments and clarifications, where he might have let the image of the men speak for itself. This proves that there are no truths to storytelling, even and especially in true war stories.
Sanders's advice points out that even in the case of an unreliable narrator, the truest part of a true war story ...

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