War Stories

Our theme this week was stories about war.  We read Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wilfred Owen’s “Disabled” and “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Marjane Satrapi’s “The Shabbat,” and Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story.”  All of these stories were closely related to the theme of this week’s readings.  I thought it was very interesting how reading Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” changed my perspective on the other stories we had read earlier in the week.  “How to Tell a True War Story” talks about the realities of war.  It says that true war stories do not have a moral or lesson to learn.  True war stories have no real ending.  According to this idea of a true war story, I believe that all of the stories that we read in class this week would fit the description of a true war story.  These stories seemed to show the reader only a small piece of an event or a person’s life.   Even after one finishes reading the story, it is easy to imagine that event or existence continuing on for many years to come.  These stories also had no lesson for the reader to learn.  They simply showed the harsh realities of war and its aftermath.