Some Questions for Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story”
Your name: Shiyel Rittenbach
1) How would you describe the plot of this story? Remember that “plot” is the sequence or order or structure of events. Is this story’s plot chronological or linear? Episodic?
Circular? A montage? What plot devices is this writer using? Flashbacks? Framing?
Multiple, parallel, or intersecting plots?
We’ve only just touched on plot in our class discussions so far, but do as well as you can with this question. The story obviously does not have a traditional plot—see what you can come up with.
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The plot in this story cannot be summed up into one specific plot. It can be circular, because the other does come to the same conclusion story after story, but it’s almost linear because, when he goes back into the different war stories, a lot of them are the of the same type. Or perhaps a montage because it does use a lot of different stories to create one big reasoning. The author does use flashbacks by using examples of the war stories as well as commenting on dialogue.
2) Thinking as a fiction writer, and considering the kinds of choices writers must inevitably make, WHY go with the kind of plot you’ve described above? Why would a writer chose such a structure for his/her narrative?
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The writer would choose this to make a strong, definite point. There is an underlying opinion through all of the situations he describes and how he defines war.
3) Who are the story’s main characters? What is the main character’s chief form of pain?
What’s his issue? Who is the main character?
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The stories main characters are Rat (haunted by the death of his close friend) and Curt (the dead friend) as well as the narrator. Their form of pain comes through death and desctruction. It comes through the most horrible forms war can come in and thrive in. Rat has an extremely hard time coping with the death of his friend, so he resorts to violent, non-human actions. He is a friend so concerned about Curt’s death that he cannot handle it when someone doesn’t understand like he does. No one can possibly get what he’s going through.
4) The title of this piece suggests that the story will ultimately explain or give instructions for telling a true war story. So—how DOES one tell a true war story?
What are the particular difficulties, according to this narrator, in telling the events of war? What is this narrator saying about “truth” and how we understand it?

 One tells a true war story by telling a false one. It’s contradictory because in order to tell an ultimately true war story, one must find a more realistic but fake one in order to make someone believe, even if it isn’t the main intention.
It’s hard to tell that something is true mostly because they sound so unreal.
The narrator explains that truth can be the most brutal form possible, even if it isn’t believable. We understand truth to be something to sound like it can realistically happen.
5) How important is setting in this story?
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Setting could be important, since the Vietnam War is known as a rather bloody and unpopular war (from the public’s viewpoint). However, war doesn’t change definition by specific names. War is brutal, or “beautiful”, no matter where it takes place. Since this story is to prove the truth in war stories, setting may not always be important.
6) What are some interesting, strange, moving, thought-provoking, or otherwise resonant details of the setting?
 I find it intense when the narrator goes into describing war as beautiful. It’s weird. You think that you’re taught war as being bad, ugly, and solved in the end. It reminded me of car crashes. You don’t want to look because you know it’s horrible, yet you can’t seem to look away.
7) Why does the writer include the details you identified in #7 above? Out of all the possible details in that particular setting, why has he allowed us to see (or hear, or smell) THOSE details? What is the effect of those details on the reader? Again: read like a writer.
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He needs to show the harsh reality of war. With the description, he can show his personal experiences as truth. The details, in some way, makes us angry.
The shots to the water buffalo ringing in ears, the vision of Curt stuck to the tree with his insides all on the outside..it’s hard. It’s hard to mentally experience something like that. It makes sense that people can define truth as being realistic, when, really, some stuff is so out of reach that we cannot cope with the possibility.
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