Friday, May 23, 2008

“How to Tell a True War Story”

Why include the buffalo scene? What’s the effect on you, the reader? Why is this more painful than the death of Lemon? Why does Rat do it?
Posted by at

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

"How to tell a true war story" begins with O'Brien remembering Rat, and a short mention of the letter which Lemon's sister never replies to.After experiencing the pain of having his best friend taken away so suddenly by a booby trapped 105 round in a harmless game of catch, it shows Rat's breaking point. He creates a true war story, in which you have the complete visceral gut feeling described by O'Brien. Coming across a water buffalo, a baby at that, Rat at first shows indifference, and even kindness offering food to the animal, but at its refusal to accept his solemn kindness, Rat feels nothing in stepping back and shooting the baby right in the knees. The fact that the animal "did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up again.." might be what drives Rat to ruthlessly torture the innocent beast. You both sympathize with the animal, which has done nothing wrong, and is just a punching bag for Rat's blind devastation and rage, and you understand where Rat's rage wells from and feel the pain of both beasts reduced to this one scene of unrelenting violence. Even with this sympathy there comes of vast realization of its pointlessness, and the misery of the war, and the great truth that there are no glorious beautiful and romantic war stories, only those that make you as a reader squirm, make you as the reader more lost than you were when you read it. This realization of the pettiness of the entire war effort makes Lemon's death even more painful for Rat. The realization that many more people just like Lemon are dying every day for a fight that goes nowhere. So he takes that confusion, and pain and tries to relieve it on the helpless, noiseless buffalo. He is in tears as all his wrath and destruction, and torture brings him no peace. The serenity of the dying buffalo makes it even more impactful, all you can you can help imagining are the eyes, hollow, dying, as helpless as the entire story on a whole. It leaves the reader stunned at the brutality and helplessness the war leaves on soldiers. The havoc it wreaks on the human psyche, and the great truth of nothingness it instills.

May 26, 2008 at 2:37 PM
Megan Wongkamalasai said...

I felt that O'brein included the story of the baby buffalo to show that in war even the most innocent are in danger because war effects everyone surrounding it, not just the ones fighting it. In the buffalo's case it was not even in the right place showing that in war no one really knows where or what they are doing, they just cower and shoot in hopes that they kill someone before they get killed themselves. As the reader you already or emotionally disturbed by Lemon's death because of the innocence of his character trying to occupy time by playing a harmless game, but the baby buffalo causes you to feel almost disgusted by the realities and horrors that war wreaks. I found it ironic though how if you retell this story people are always more concerned about the buffalo over everything else showing just how skewed people's view are about war. War is not a place where you pity the vulnerable, that is not what runs through a soldier's mind. Rather they try to look past all the horror and try to find the beauty in order to keep sane.

May 26, 2008 at 8:08 PM
Rosey said...

I believe O'Brien's inclusion of the water buffalo was to be symbolic of the soldiers lives, and it was the very same reason that Lemon's death is downplayed. The Water Buffalo is an innocent entity, true, but O' Brien also displays the innocence of the soldiers throughout the book- they carried M&Ms and comic books, dressing up in Halloween costumes, etc. The main idea in the Water Buffalo passage, in my opinion, doesn't really lie in its innocence, but rather this idea that theres almost this gratification in death. The torturing of the water buffalo appeals to the reader because after all of this pain and torture, the water buffalo is still alive, but barely and only in the eyes. O'Brien intends for the lives of the army men in Vietnam to appear much of the same; Vietnam literally stripped the soldiers of everything. The environment of warfare was unbearable-suffocating almost like a Water Buffalo with its legs shot out, and the soldiers were so fatigued that death almost seemed a relief. So much so, that soldiers could joke around and call a tree with Lemon's guts in it a "Lemon Tree"

May 26, 2008 at 9:36 PM
Evan Syverson said...

"How to Tell a True War Story" includes the brutalizing of a baby buffalo. The buffalo is shot innumerable times, deformed, and paralyzed until it is left for dead. At no point to we see a clear death scene for the buffalo, leaving us with no real closure. The reason for this, I feel, is that the buffalo is symbolic of Vietnam as a whole. Despite our efforts at ending the war with violence and brutality, it simply will not end. The war, and the buffalo, carry on, dragging feelings of pain and suffering with it, despite it's innocence. Moreover, at no point is vietnam successfully "won" just as the buffalo will quickly die.

May 27, 2008 at 4:43 AM
Mrs. Gerber said...

It's interesting to see the parallels between the Buffalo and Vitenam as a whole, the Buffalo and the soldiers, and the Buffalo as a "punching bag" for Rat's rage. Strong, solid responses. In connection with Megan’s “irony” statement, why are we as readers more likely to get a "gut response" from the buffalo scene vs. Lemon's death? Why/how is the buffalo better able to capture the truth here?

May 27, 2008 at 7:49 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)