"You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference - a powerful, implacable beauty- and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly." (pg. 77)
I love the truth in this passage from the book. It is so true that we like watching horrible things. It must just be something about the way we are composed. We hate that bad things happen, but when they do, they somehow mesmerize us. I can relate to the comment about forest fires. When I went on a trip out West in the sixth grade, I was amused by the forest fires. They ruined people's lives, but for some reason I couldn't take my eyes off of them. Sometimes I think it is the power of fire that strikes me in utter awe.
The section in the book How to Tell a True War Story also kind of confused me. I didn't really understand some of the paradoxes he used. For example, "In a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true." I can't really grasp that one. The end of this section did make a lot of sense to me, so I am going to type it out because I do find a lot of truth in it. Also, O'Brien uses anaphora here to make his point more coherent. "It's about" begins every sentence except for the first one. He wants the reader to truly understand what a true war story is about.
A True War Story...
"And in the end, of course, a rue war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen."
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