From 2ebc8128875ac0c887f82a6180f3e7351b6999bd Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Holden Rohrer Date: Wed, 6 May 2020 17:31:00 -0400 Subject: added tttc-true.tex --- jones-la/tttc-true.tex | 36 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 36 insertions(+) create mode 100644 jones-la/tttc-true.tex (limited to 'jones-la') diff --git a/jones-la/tttc-true.tex b/jones-la/tttc-true.tex new file mode 100644 index 0000000..99b6289 --- /dev/null +++ b/jones-la/tttc-true.tex @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +\input mla8 + +\numberfirstpage +\name{Holden} \last{Rohrer} +\prof{Jones} +\clas{AP Lang} + +\header +\title{The Old Woman in {\it How To Tell A True War Story}} + +{\it How To Tell A True War Story} is partially about the mental fog of +war and mostly about the near-incomprehensibility of war to someone who +hasn't experienced it. The old woman who comes up to O'Brien at the end +of his telling of the war story acts as evidence of this kind of +person's inability to get the absurdity of a war story by attempting to +fit it into preexisting notions and storytelling archetypes---themes, +morals, a parabolic narrative structure. + +The reason that O'Brien chooses this person as the stereotypical +miscomprehender is because the ``kindly temperament and humane +politics'' are too well thought out and at odds with the visceral +understanding of the contradictory nature of war that O'Brien is asking +of the reader. The abusive ``dumb old cooze'' phrase contributes as a +warning against the reader to take a war story too literally or +generalize or reason about these stories. + +His objective is making the reader understand that in the same way any +of the stories he tells are pointless or wonderful or horrific, so is +the war, and the book can't have a singular overarching theme except for +self-contradiction. O'Brien makes a point of truth being separate from +reality because visceral emotion is the only kind of information that +can be shared if the basic assumption is true. Anger or frustration or +awe are the same regardless of the story that contains them, and O'Brien +wants the reader to remain at that basic level. + +\bye -- cgit