Summary of the Chapter, “How to Tell a True War Story”
Criteria, Definitions, and Other Good Stuff
Criteria
Things to remember about true war stories
Definitions:
Moral: (adj) relating to principles of right and wrong; teaching the concept of right and wrong
(n) practical lesson of a story
passage pointing out the lesson to be drawn from the story
Rectitude: (n): 1 moral uprightness; righteousness
2 the quality or condition of judging correctly
True: 1 (adj) a steadfast, loyal, honest to be in accordance with the actual state of affairs
2 (adj) in accordance with fact or reality
Truth: 1 sincerity in action, character, and utterance
2 state of actually being the case; fact
3 a transcendental fundamental or spiritual reality
Transcendental: (adj) 1 being beyond comprehension
2 to go beyond the limits of the universe or material existence
“How to Tell a True War Story”
The moral: “That quiet—just listen. There is your moral”
-Laughlin's Note: notice how the moral doesn't really make sense when you put it into words: that's the point. "Just listen" is the moral.
An Insight: “adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth”
-Laughlin's Note: I talked on Friday about the blurred relationship between fact and fiction. This is an example, how sometimes truths have to be altered, enhanced, lessened, so that the reader will be able to more accurately understand what really happened.
Postmodernism: “The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true”
-Laughlin's Note: apply this quote to the characters, and how their lives are different in Vietnam and at home. Are the rules of the two worlds the same? Which rules are better? Which rules do the men seem to hold onto? The answer will change for each character, so keep track.
Criteria, Definitions, and Other Good Stuff
Criteria
- A true war story is never moral
- It does not instruct
- It does not encourage virtue
- It does not suggest models of human behavior
- It does not restrain men from doing the things men have always done
- It is not uplifting
- It has no rectitude
- It has no virtue
- It has an absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil
- It cannot be believed
- It does not generalize
- It does not indulge in abstractions or analysis
- A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe
- The truths are contradictory
- In a true war story, nothing is ever absolutely true
- In a true war story there is not even a point
- A true war story is never about war
- It’s about love and memory
- It’s about sorrow
- It’s about sisters who never write back and people who never listen
Things to remember about true war stories
- They embarrass you
- If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for truth
- If you don’t care for truth, watch how you vote
- If you send a group to war, they come home talking dirty
- In them, it is difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen
- If you believe it, be skeptical
- Often what seems crazy is true; what seems normal is not
- Sometimes true war stories are beyond telling
- A true war story never seems to end
- If it’s a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like a thread that makes the cloth. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning.
- You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. If you ask if it’s true, and if the answer matters, you have your answer.
- Absolute occurrence is irrelevant
- A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.
Definitions:
Moral: (adj) relating to principles of right and wrong; teaching the concept of right and wrong
(n) practical lesson of a story
passage pointing out the lesson to be drawn from the story
Rectitude: (n): 1 moral uprightness; righteousness
2 the quality or condition of judging correctly
True: 1 (adj) a steadfast, loyal, honest to be in accordance with the actual state of affairs
2 (adj) in accordance with fact or reality
Truth: 1 sincerity in action, character, and utterance
2 state of actually being the case; fact
3 a transcendental fundamental or spiritual reality
Transcendental: (adj) 1 being beyond comprehension
2 to go beyond the limits of the universe or material existence
“How to Tell a True War Story”
The moral: “That quiet—just listen. There is your moral”
-Laughlin's Note: notice how the moral doesn't really make sense when you put it into words: that's the point. "Just listen" is the moral.
An Insight: “adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth”
-Laughlin's Note: I talked on Friday about the blurred relationship between fact and fiction. This is an example, how sometimes truths have to be altered, enhanced, lessened, so that the reader will be able to more accurately understand what really happened.
Postmodernism: “The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true”
-Laughlin's Note: apply this quote to the characters, and how their lives are different in Vietnam and at home. Are the rules of the two worlds the same? Which rules are better? Which rules do the men seem to hold onto? The answer will change for each character, so keep track.