Response #2

A good storyteller can tell a story so realistically no matter whether it really happened or not. "It's the form, not the game", O'brien says. How a story-truth can be truer than happening-truth, according to him, depends on how the story is told. The author was a soldier in Vietnam war, and he tells the happening-truth side of the story "I was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look." To show how a same story can be told differently, he tells the story-truth side of the story: "His jaw was in his throat, his uuper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other was a star-shaped hole..." and it goes on. As an audience, I wouldn't care whether the story is real or not, as long as it entertains me and keeps me on the edge of the seat. The concept of "death" comes really closer in the latter version of the story than the first. In addition to that, the author adds how the dead young vietcong might have gone to college, loved his math major, loved his family and friends and girlfriend, and how much he might have hated the fact that he has to fight, as much as the soldier who killed him. Suddenly, the body lying there is not just a vietcong, but a human being, who had a dreams and love, all gone now. Not only the latter version gives me the creeps to imagine the dead body, but also makes me feel sympathetic for the dead young vietcong. Throughout the story, he repeat the description of the dead body, the "his jaw was in his throat..." for some reason, probably because he wants to keep reminding the reader that picture. The soldier who killed the poor vietcong is Tim, who is speechless the whole time, keeps staring back at the dead body, probably out of sympathy and guilt.