5.Journal Entry "How to Tell a True War Story"

Rat Kiley lost one of his best friends during the war, they both were only 19 and having a good time play a game they made up to waste time. They were just throwing back and forth a smoke grenade to see who could hold onto it longer, there was absolutely no harm in this because it simply would just blow up and a you would be covered in smoke. However Curt Lemon stepped on a trap and it killed him. When Tim O'Brien tells us how he dies, he explains it to be almost beautiful, as if his brown skin was shinning in the sun lite. I think that it is very odd to be describing a death as "beautiful" because no death in war should be especially when you are blown to pieces and your remains are scattered amongst a tree. The fact that the death is talked about in such a pretty way makes me wounder how much of it is true, it makes me think that maybe its more of a memory that they wanted to believe and not actually what they saw. The mind plays tricks on us in order to protect us from the evil in the world, we choose to see what we can handle and what we think is right. In this case I feel that O'Brien wants to see a young kids death to be beautiful and not ugly and disgusting the way it might of been. "If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude as been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie." This is true, even though Lemon had died, the way the story was told, made it seem like it was okay because of how beautiful it was.