Things They Carry

THINGS THEY CARRY

Through the novel we have understood what O’Brien thinks of true war stories. O’Brien statements about war stories is a true war story is never moral, you can’t tell a true war story. It’s beyond telling. In a true war story, nothing is absolutely true. A true war story is never about war. It’s about love. But the most appealing to show me what a true war story is when it makes the stomach believe. I feel that a true war story will be told to you that not only do you get sadden or scared from it mentally. But that its details are so extreme and severe that your stomach believes it. When you read about the killing of a baby buffalo. It shows what an event at war is. When the details are explained to you in such depth of what they have done to the buffalo. It gets you sadden and it scares you. If the story gets to you as much as it did to me, it should get to your stomach. That shows you that it is a true war story. When details such as we “shot it in the right front knee, the animal did not make a sound.” “It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear.” When stories of war are explained such as this one about the baby buffalo it showed me how horrible war is. It shows how even the enemies animals should suffer as well as their soldiers. Even though were speaking about an animal not a human it still gets to me. It gets to me so much that it hurt me in the stomach. That is what a true war story is, when it gets to you in the stomach.