Wartime Stories Serve as a Medium to Communicate Unspeakable Scenes in the Battlefield
The scenes of a battlefield entail horrific and strange encounters that cannot be directly presented to an ordinary audience that lacks battlefield experience. Among the encounters include disturbing deaths more so deaths and the traumatic effects generated by the deadly encounters. In return, soldiers often find a friendly and conducive manner to disclose the unspeakable elements of the happening within the battlefield. The move helps create a picture in the mind of the audience of a typical battlefield without having to generate trauma or create fear among the listeners. Although O’Brien explain that a true war is not a moral story, I argue that wartime stories serve as a medium to communicate the unspeakable scenes of a battlefield, therefore giving the audience a different moral lesson.
Under the section “How to tell a true war story” O’Brien adequately presents the happenings of a battlefield in a friendly way which offers the audience a lesson on how to presents a traumatic scenario in a friendly manner. The various presentations include the illustration of Curt Lemon’s death. To present the actual scenario O’Brien relates the blow to a lift by the sunlight that surrounded him “the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him up high on the tree” (O’Brien 2). The illustration helps present a smoke grenade blow in a friendly way that would not generate fear among the audience. In this regard, the audience learns how to manage the effects of situation on their audience by developing a narrative that presents similar information in a different manner. O’Brien further develop a narrative concerning a smoke grenade game between the Lemon and Rat Kiley to outline the risk involved in a battle field. In particular, O’Brien develops that “the smoke Grenades are not harmful unless you did stupid things” (O’Brien 2). The illustration help outline the need for one to remain focused on the battlefield since it is extremely risky and slight mistakes can lead to death.
Furthermore, O’Brien illustrates the effects of traumatic stress through an illustration of Ray torturing a baby buffalo. O’Brien identifies that the whole platoon stood there watching the suffering incurred by the baby buffalo following shots made by Rat as a way of expressing his grief for his lost friend. While the rest of the team developed “feeling of all kinds” (O’Brien 6) more so pity to the suffering buffalo Rat continued to torture it until its death. The narrative helps illustrate the traumatic disorder developed upon incurring the horrific occurrences of a battlefield. In relation, O’Brien unveils the negative impacts related with battlefield activities other than the highly treasured heroism.
Work Cited
O’Brien, T. How to tell a true war story. 1990.