How To Tell A True War Story
by Tim O’Brien
Handout by Matt Godkin and Paul Johnson
Tim O’Brien
Tim O’Brien was born in Austin Minnesota
on October 1st, 1946. When O’Brien was 12
he moved to Worthington, Minnesota, a
place which would have a significant impact
on O’Brien’s early development as a writer.
He earned a BA in political science in 1968
at Macalester College and was then drafted
to serve in the Vietnam War. While in
Vietnam he served in the 23rd Infantry
Division (also known as the American
Division) which participated in the infamous
My Lai Massacre. The My Lai Massacre was
a slaughter of approximately 500 unarmed
Vietnamese by a task force from the Infantry
Division in which O’Brien served. One
eyewitness described the killing: “He fired at
it [the baby] with a .45. He missed. We all
laughed. He got up three or four feet closer
and missed again. We laughed. Then he got
up right on top and plugged him.” O’Brien’s
later writings would be heavily influenced by
what he saw in the war.
Upon completion of his tour of duty O’Brien
attended graduate school at Harvard and
interned at the Washington Post. His writing
career was launched in 1973 with If I Die in
a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me
Home, an autobiographical account of his
experience in Vietnam, which he added
fictitious elements to. In 1978 he wrote
Going After Cacciato which was also about
the Vietnam war and won the National Book
Award in 1979. O’Brien lives in Texas, with
his young sons and where he teaches fulltime every other year at Texas State.
Important Quotations
“War is Hell”
“It’s all exactly true” (474)
“It’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen” (474)
“They salute the fucker and walk away, because certain stories you don’t ever tell” (477)
“War makes you a man; war makes you dead” (479).
“In the end of, of course a true war story is never about war. It’s about the special way that
dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the
mountains and do things that you are afraid to do. It’s about love and memory. It’s about
sorrow. It’s about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.” (481)
Introduction
O'Brien wrote in I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home: "Can the foot
soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell
war stories." This is exactly what O’Brien attempts to do in How to Tell a True War Story. The
story is told from the perspective of the soldiers and depicts in vivid detail the horror of war. It
shares many common elements with other works concerning war. Apocalypse Now, a film set
during the Vietnam War, depicts the insanity of war in a similar way. Kurt Vonnegut’s account of
the firebombing of Dresden in Slaughterhouse-Five also portrays the absurdity of war with a style
comparable to O'Brien's. How to Tell a True War Story is about the horrors that the narrator and
his comrades experienced in war and how they are able, or unable, to relate them to society when
they return.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Discussion Questions
Pick 2
How is the story of how Lemon gets killed told more as a love story than as the graphic
scene it actually is?
Discuss the importance of truth in the story. Why does the narrator constantly say “this is
true”? Does it really matter whether the story is true?
Does the narrator’s storytelling style affect the reader’s perception of the story?
What does the killing of the buffalo symbolize in the story? How does is relate to other
aspects of the story?
Discuss war in the story. How does the author characterize it? Is it an important theme or
could the author convey the same message in a different setting?