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Tim O'Brien, "How to Tell a True War Story" and:

For more assignment ideas involving this essay, please visit the O'Brien link-o-mat.

Literature, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Meaning (Assignment 1)

Robert R. Harris’ book review (from The New York Times, March 11, 1990) of The Things They Carried begins with the following sentences: “Only a handful of novels and short stories have managed to clarify, in any lasting way, the meaning of the war in Vietnam for America and for the soldiers who served there. With ‘The Things They Carried,’ Tim O’Brien adds his second title to the short list of essential fiction about Vietnam.” What is the “meaning” of “How to Tell a True War Story” and how does that meaning relate to the meaning of the Vietnam War? In O’Brien’s fiction, is the meaning of the war “clarified,” as Harris claims, or is it made more complicated? How is the truth status and moral of the story related to the story’s meaning? How is the story’s style related to its meaning? Is there one meaning or are there several meanings? Be sure to formulate an original argument that you clearly state in your introduction and be sure to support your argument with textual evidence.

Michael Leong, Rutgers University, Fall 2005

From Literature, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Meaning.

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Literature, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Meaning (Assignment 2)

Please write an essay that shows how Postrel’s ideas about aesthetics complicate, elucidate, or better explain O’Brien’s short story. Be sure to give Postrel and O’Brien equal treatment in your paper.

Questions to consider:

Postrel states, “The challenge is to learn to accept that aesthetic pleasure is an autonomous good, not the highest or the best but one of many plural, sometimes conflicting, and frequently unconnected sources of value.” What are the various “sources of value” in “How to Tell a True War Story”? How do they relate to aesthetic pleasure as it is portrayed by O’Brien? What would Postrel think about this relation?

Michael Leong, Rutgers University, Fall 2005

From Literature, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Meaning.

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Literature, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Meaning (Assignment 3)

Drawing on the work of O’Brien, Postrel, and Nafisi, discuss the role of art, aesthetics, and literature in a democratic society. Be sure to formulate an original argument that you clearly state in your introduction and be sure to support your argument with textual evidence.

Questions to consider:

-The narrator in O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” resists stories with easy morals and generalizations. In contrast, he wishes to constantly retell and change his story, adding and subtracting details “to get at the real truth” (O’Brien 396). How is this desire related to Postrel’s “‘dynamist’ model in which the direction of progress is understood always to be unpredictable, open-ended, and contingent” (Miller and Spellmeyer 420)? How is it related to Nafisi’s support for a forum for thought and discussion where ideas “are not determined in advance” (Miller and Spellmeyer 334)?

Michael Leong, Rutgers University, Fall 2005

From Literature, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Meaning.

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Something Mysterious and Inexplicable (Assignment 3)

Writing Prompt and Question

Towards the end of “How to Tell a True War Story” O’Brien says, “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (396). The essay is full of complicated and seemingly contradictory statements like this that dramatize the difficulty of making sense of war and violence. How does the context (Gladwell) of war complicate truth? How does the telling of a war story (its public and or hidden transcripts) further complicate these questions of truth and meaning in the essay? Using the arguments about the “power of context” (Gladwell) and the public and hidden transcripts (Scott) to create a frame for interpreting “How to Tell a True War Story,” address the following question/issue: What is the relationship between the experience of war and the representation of it?

Getting Started:

  • Based on Gladwell’s theory of the “power of context,” how might the context of the war shape meaning and truth in “How to Tell a True War Story”?
  • The following question from the making connections section following Scott’s essay is a great starting point for thinking about O’Brien in relationship to Scott: “In ‘How to Tell a True Story,’ Tim O’Brien insists that the story he has to tell is true, even though that story comes from O’Brien’s collection The Things they Carried, which he explicitly labels a work of fiction. Is O’Brien providing ‘the public transcript’ or the hidden transcript of what it means to go to war? If one accepts Scott’s terminology, it is possible to speak definitively of ‘truth’ and fiction’ or do all accounts become subject to the charge that their authors are interested, biased, or invested in a certain point of view? In fact, is it even possible to tell a true war story’?” (536).
  • When working through these questions of truth, keep in mind the subjectivity of experience and interpretation, as well as the way writing is shaped by imperatives of social performativity?
  • Also, as always, when creating your theoretical frame for the essay, remember to take into account the differences between Scott and Gladwell as well as the limits of applying either to O’Brien’s essay.

Carrie Hyde, Rutgers University, Fall 2005

From Something Mysterious and Inexplicable.

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Defining Truth (Assignment 1)

Both Jon Krakauer and Tim O’Brien, in the assigned readings, stress the importance of trying to arrive at the truth of what happened to their central characters. In “Selections from Into the Wild,” Krakauer does a great deal of investigation in his attempt to determine the truth about why Chris McCandless felt the need to escape into the Alaskan wilderness, and why he died in the endeavor. Similarly, although “How to Tell a True War Story,” is actually a work of fiction, Tim O’Brien stresses repeatedly that he is seeking to arrive at the truth about what happened to him and his fellow soldiers during the Viet Nam War.

How do you define and understand the “truth”, in light of the truth that both Krakauer and O’Brien are trying to arrive at in their work? Does it mean the same thing to you as it does to either or both authors? Do you feel that one of them is more successful than the other in his attempt to arrive at the truth? Why or why not?

Mary J. Oltarzewski, Rutgers University, Fall 2005

From Defining Truth.

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Defining Truth (Assignment 2)

Both “How to Tell a True War Story,” and “The Naked Citadel” are accounts of young men, who whether by choice or by obligation, are isolated from the rest of society in an unnatural fashion; both sets of men create their own rituals and cultures in response to the stress and isolation.

O’Brien addresses the stress by constantly revising and re-telling his account of the narrator’s experience, wondering if he “could ever get the story right,” (p.396); he finally concludes that “You can tell a true war story if you just keep on telling it.” Many of the Citadel cadets quoted in Faludi’s essay address stress differently: they resist change and cling to the same rituals and traditions, showing hostility and aggression toward any person or thing who threatens those traditions.

Once the men who have lived through these experiences leave the military or the Citadel, and return to the larger world, will either approach be more helpful in adjusting to society and living conventional lives? Is it healthy to “revise and re-tell” like O’Brien, or is it possible to defend traditions and rituals, like those of the Citadel, in a socially productive way?

Mary J. Oltarzewski, Rutgers University, Fall 2005

From Defining Truth.

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Defining Truth (Assignment 3)

In “The Roots of Debate” Deborah Tannen states , “If you limit your view of a problem to choosing between two sides, you inevitably reject much that is true, and you narrow your field of vision to the limits of those two sides, making it unlikely you’ll pull back, widen your field of vision and discover the paradigm shift that will permit truly new understanding.” Tannen continues, “We need to use our imaginations and ingenuity to find different ways to seek truth and gain knowledge,” so that as students and readers, our understanding extends beyond the simple, dualistic, “only two sides to a question” method of debate.

In the three assigned essays, by what means have Tim O’Brien, Susan Faludi, or Deborah Tannen attempted to use their “imaginations or ingenuity to find different ways to seek truth and gain knowledge?” If you believe that any of the three authors was significantly more successful in helping you, the reader, to “seek truth and gain knowledge,” explain why, relying on specific examples of the author’s language and content to support your preference. If you believe that any of the three authors was significantly LESS successful in helping you, the reader, to “seek truth and gain knowledge,” explain why, pointing to specific aspects of the author’s language and content that you believe may have impeded his or her message.

Mary J. Oltarzewski, Rutgers University, Fall 2005

From Defining Truth.

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Reconciliation (Assignment 5)

Context:

  • Both Nafisi and O’Brien are concerned with the complexity and real difficulty of truth-telling in situations badly in need of reconciliation.
  • Both Nafisi and O’Brien are convinced of the power of stories.
  • O’Brien claims, “You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask” (83). Nafisi was also interested in the questions Nabokov’s “stories” – and the women’s stories – raised.
  • The women of whom Nafisi writes and the characters of whom O’Brien writes are all actively engaged in a struggle to survive unspeakably difficult circumstances.

Assignment Question: What can Nafisi and O’Brien tell us about the nature of “truth telling” – its challenges, its importance, its various manifestations, and its effects?

Questions to Prime the Pump:

  • We know Nafisi and “her girls” lied to survive. Are there different levels of truth? Are there lies that actually serve truth? Are there truths that are in fact lies?
  • Many of O’Brien’s readers become upset when they learn The Things They Carried is a work of fiction. Nabokov also writes fiction, and Sheherazade, herself a fiction, created more fiction to stop the slaughter. What is the relationship between fiction and truth?
  • A common assumption states that “the first casualty of war is truth.” Is this phrase applicable to the Iranian revolution? To the Vietnam War? Would Nafisi and O’Brien consider “truth” a “casualty” in their works? In their worlds?
  • Beyond the obvious needs for reconciliation among “warring factions,” the women of Iran were in need of reconciliation within their own identities while the soldiers of Vietnam were in need of reconciliation within their minds and consciences. What kinds of truth helped them achieve these reconciliations? What failed them?
  • O’Brien said a “true war story is never moral. It does not instruct nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it

[. . . I]f you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie” (69). How would Nafisi respond to this statement?

Karen Kalteissen, Rutgers University, Fall 2005

From Reconciliation.

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Reconciliation (Assignment 6)

Context:

  • “Reconciliation” is an important concept in the teachings of many religions. In Roman Catholicism, for example, “reconciliation” is part of its sacramental vocabulary, encompassing confession, penance and forgiveness.
  • Likewise “peace,” “justice,” “truth” “tolerance,” and “love” are mentioned frequently in the scriptures and teachings of many faiths.
  • Advocates of religion in general or specific religions in particular often claim that religious faith is a force for good in the world.
  • Just as often, however, religion has been divisive, antagonistic, and bellicose. Some critics claim religion in general or specific religions in particular are a force for discord in the world.
  • Many religious groups were vocal in their support or opposition to the Vietnam conflict of which O’Brien writes, and even more religious groups are vocal in their support or opposition to the current war in Iraq.

Assignment Question: What can Armstrong’s ideas about the reconciling potential of spirituality as well as the divisive potential of fundamentalism offer O’Brien and others embroiled or trapped in bitter conflict?

Questions to Prime the Pump:

  • How does Armstrong distinguish among religiosity, religion, faith and spirituality?
  • What characterizes “fundamentalism,” “revealed religion,” “spirituality” and “mysticism” according to Armstrong?
  • Is there anything “spiritual” about O’Brien’s search for truth in retelling the Vietnam experience? Can you find any hints of (Armstrong’s kind of) “mysticism” in O’Brien or your other author?
  • Is there anything analogous to (Armstrong’s understanding of) “revealed truth” or “fundamentalism” that causes conflict in O’Brien or in your other author?
  • Can thinking of your authors – and the topic of reconciliation – in these terms lead you to an inkling of an “action horizon” as we have discussed it in class?

Karen Kalteissen, Rutgers University, Fall 2005

From Reconciliation.

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