The wars don't end when you sign peace treaties or when the years go by. They will echo on until I'm gone and all the widows and orphans are gone.
Tim O'BrienRead
In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a war story nothing is ever absolutely true.
Interpretation
What this quote means
In war, the concept of truth becomes blurred and subjective due to the chaos and complexities involved.
Tim O'Brien's quote highlights the elusive nature of truth in the context of war, suggesting that the chaos and emotional turmoil can distort reality. It implies that war stories often reflect subjective experiences rather than objective truths, complicating our understanding of what really happened.
Themes
WarTruthStorytellingPerspectiveSubjectivity
In practice
Example use cases
A veteran sharing their experiences at a memorial service.
More from Tim O'Brien
All quotes →...you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not.
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Unlike Chicago or New York, small-town Minnesota did not allow a man's failings to disappear beneath a veil of numbers. People talked. Secrets did not stay secret.
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Place is so important to me. The Midwest is like a ghost in my life. It's present as I look out the window now. I see Texas, but if I close my eyes and look out the same window, I'm back in my hometown in Worthington, Minnesota, and I cherish those values and that diction.
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In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination.
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War is a fundamental aspect of human existence. It's good to know what war entails and what the human sacrifice is.
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