Journal #5

According to O'Brien, a true war story is never moral. It doesn't instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. There is no rectitude whatsoever.  There is no virtue.  You can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.  You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you.  In many cases a true war story cannot be believed.  If you do believe, you should be skeptical.  Sometimes you cannot even tell a true war story.  Sometimes it’s beyond telling.  You can tell a true war story by the way it never ends.  If a true story has a moral to it, you can’t tease it out.  True war stories do not generalize.  They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis.  A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.  In a true war story, nothing is ever absolutely true.  Often a true war story doesn’t have a point.  You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask.  Absolute occurrence is irrelevant.  You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it.  A true war story is never about war.

According to O’Brien, stories are important because they have the power to shape listeners’ opinions and experiences.  Because of this, the reader is unsure what aspects of the story are true and which are untrue.  Throughout this vignette, O’Brien describes the characteristics of a true war story.  He explains why it doesn’t have to be truthful or make sense, or even have a moral.  Therefore, the reader is left confused because they do not know what to believe as truthful or a figment of his imagination.  Did the water buffalo incident occur or not?

For me, I was more upset about the baby water buffalo's death.  To me, that was more gruesome than the death of Curt Lemon.  I have a soft spot for animals as it is, so when I read about how it was just tortured, I pretty much cried.  The reason this part really upset me was because the poor baby water buffalo was being tortured because Kiley couldn't cope with Curt Lemon's death.  I don't believe that repeatedly shooting at a water buffalo can help someone overcome the death of another.  It's cruel and inhumane.  I understand he was obviously extremely upset about Curt Lemon's death, but torturing a poor animal is not the way to go about handling anger.

When O'Brien said that this wasn't a war story, it was a love story, I was confused.  I didn't understand how any part of this vignette could be related to a love story.  Nothing about it was romantics or sweet.  O'Brien tells Curt Lemon's death as a love story. Though it is gruesome, he describes the scene as beautiful.  He focuses on the sunlight rather than the carnage.  Blood and carnage aren't even discussed, not even when O'Brien and Jensen have to go up the tree in order to throw down Curt Lemon's body parts.  The way O'Brien describes this action, and the death as a whole, is not specific and detached.  His storytelling functions as comfort so he can deal with the difficulty of war experience, so much even as to twist the story of Curt Lemon from a war story to a love story.