O'Brien And The Truth About War

Books, movies and other materials that have a war theme are usually expected to be full of action from beginning to end and also include lots of blood, gore and death. However Tim O’Brien didn’t stick to these expectations and broke with the typical war story genre. This proves the statement that, “ Genres are not simply features of texts, but are mediating frameworks between texts, makers and interpreters.” (Chandler) Yet a text might just verge off like The Things They Carried and include instances of individual thought and individual dramatic situations.
“Certainly the assignment of a text to a genre influences how the text is read. Genre constrains the possible ways in which a text is interpreted, guiding readers of a text towards a preferred reading.” (Chandler) Other movies and books mentioned in the blog such as Saving Private Ryan and Platoon do adhere to the status quo of War Movies. In agreement with the quote above and with personal experience, I can say that I did have inkling about what the movies were about. This was because of other war movies I had seen and also because of other ‘war story’ experiences I had. All of the movies had blood and gore, lots of action, machine guns, rifles, death and instances of suspense. O’Brien does acknowledge these usual cases but he also involves an attempt to make his readers experience a more realistic war incident. In Spin O’Brien it was described how boring a war could be. He says, “The war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist, the kind of boredom that caused stomach disorder.” Another attempt to connect on a level of truth is Good Form. Within the passage he says, “ I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer than happening-truth.”
In, “The Man I Killed,” the description of a dead body and the constant repetition of how it looked was also a connection to the true emotions of a soldier after that sort of trauma. O’Brien wanted his readers to connect with the events, his experiences, and his truths.