How to tell a true war story is a chapter of O'Brien' s book The Things They Carried. How to Tell a True War Story is told half from O'Brien's role as a soldier and half from his role as a storyteller.
O'Brien starts the story by saying that it is true. In the chapter, O'Brien insists that a true war story is not moral and tells us not to believe a story that seems moral because a story that seems moral is might changed by the storyteller. （How to tell a true war story) O’Brien’ s narrative shows that a storyteller has the power to shape his or her listeners' experiences and opinions, such as O'Brien tells Curt Lemon's death as a love story. “His storytelling functions as a salve that allows him to deal with the complexity of the war experience, so much even as to turn the story of Curt Lemon from a war story to a love story. "（An Analysis of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried）A true war story is not about courage and heroism but about the misplaced anger and the inability of soldiers to deal with their feelings about a horrible experience. Sometimes a true war story cannot be believed because some of the most unbearable parts are true, but some of the normal parts are not.
Sometimes, a true war story is impossible to tell. Therefore, the facticity of a war story is subjective. How the story is told depends on different people and different ways of storytelling. Storytellers shape the original story into their own version and call it also a true story.
O'Brien, Tim, "How to tell a true war story", 13 May 2013, PDF file
Cobras, "An Analysis of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried",13 May 2013, http://cobras.hubpages.com/hub/An-Analysis-of-Tim-OBriens-How-to-Tell-a-True-War-Story-Orange-Sunshine
