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Why does Tim O'Brien insist that war stories are not moral?

This idea of war stories not being moral, or having a moral, is centered around O'Brien's theme regarding war throughout the novel. O'Brien tells the readers many times and through many different stories that war is chaotic and random and impossible to understand unless one experiences it. In "Spin," for example, O'Brien describes the boredom:


"The war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist that...

This idea of war stories not being moral, or having a moral, is centered around O'Brien's theme regarding war throughout the novel. O'Brien tells the readers many times and through many different stories that war is chaotic and random and impossible to understand unless one experiences it. In "Spin," for example, O'Brien describes the boredom:



"The war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist that caused stomach disorders. […] you'd think, this isn't so bad. And right then you'd hear gunfire behind you and your nuts would fly up into your throat and you'd be squealing pig squeals. That kind of boredom."



These experiences cannot be understood secondhand, especially, O'Brien points out, from trite aphorisms like "war is hell." Instead, O'Brien claims, you have to tell story after story, sometimes not even all true, in order to get at the feeling of what it's like to be in a war. This is what O'Brien does in "A True War Story," when he tells tale after tale of these decent, ordinary boys and men doing horrific and cruel things. He says,



"A true war story is never moral […] if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue."



In the moments of "A True War Story," O'Brien demonstrates how war leeches the morality from the men and boys of the Alpha Company, from Rat Kiley shooting a baby buffalo into a mangled mess to Dave Jensen singing "Lemon Tree" as he pulls bits of Curt Lemon's body from the tree he exploded into. These men aren't evil; the war has just stripped away their morality, and the morality of the world they inhabit. For that reason, there cannot be morals in a true war story.

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