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\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
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