How To Tell A True War Story English Literature Essay

Violence is an integral part in the American society just as in Don Delillo’s videotape, where violence displays the existing cruel and sick world which we were brought into by our parents in movies, we watch and also play video games that are full of violence.

Video tape in essence is a story which talks about reality in which a girl reality in which a girl aged 12 years learns how to use a camera while driving in a car with her family. While aimlessly shooting the camera, she accidentally films a man who is shot dead.

It seems that while she is filming the murder, the young girl loses her innocence because she is exposed to something which she is not ready for in her young life. In Tim O’Brien’s ‘How to Tell a True War Story’, O’Brien humanizes war so that the readers know how difficult it is, to tell a war story. He gives advices on how to tell a true war story but unfortunately, the advice contradict each other and don’t make any sense.

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O’Brien starts the story using the sentence…This is true. He tells the war story using many stories each version a little different from the other. He paints a gruesome picture of what he and his friends experienced on the war front and how they survived.

It is imperative to note that the author Tim O’Brien was drafted and served in the Vietnam War. Not only does his stint in the army influence his writings but also enables him to reveal his personal feelings.

Postmodernism in the society is reflected in Don Delillo’s videotape. The reader is left to figure out on who the protagonist is as well the focus of the story. The story revolves around a little girl who innocently videotapes a crime. In essence, the focus is actually on the person narrating the story, who watched the tape being broadcasted on television.

Therefore, the story has two perspectives; the little girl’s perspective, in which there is coincidence in the crime happening when the girl videotapes the incident while she is in the car, and on the other hand, there is the perspective of the narrator who has watched the horrifying death scene on television.

There is realism in the story whereby the author writes the story in a realistic way depicting everyday life experiences. Everyone keeps saying how horrible the death scene is but ironically, no one turns off the television. ‘Is it because of curiosity or disbelief?’

Both authors, Tim O’ Brien and Don Delillo, lived through wars more specifically the Vietnam Wars and World War II. During the nuclear bombs and Vietnam War, the society lived through disbelief and wondered about death. Don Delillo creates realism in his story whereby he writes story in a realistic way depicting everyday life experiences. O’Brien on the other hand brings about paradox to his readers. He depicts violence and later tells the readers that characters depicted and events in the story did not occur as he had described. Therefore O’Brien strongly throws a challenge to the readers to discover on their own the truth in his story.

Violence and death affects the spiritual life of people. The many atrocities that O’Brien witnessed in the war zone have definitely affected his relationship with God who abhors any kind of violence.

‘How to Tell a True War Story’ is not straightforward because it did not follow the chronological sequence from start to end like a traditional story. Instead it has a collection of small stories that are interspersed with instructions on war stories. Videotape on the other hand is a straightforward story where a girl films a murder scene which is later aired on television.

The theme of morality is quite evident in both stories. O’Brien tells of the unexplained brutal murder of innocent people on both sides at the war front. He says that a war story which is true is never moral. In videotape, exposing a young child to murder films and the media playing murder scenes as a form of entertainment is morally wrong.

Theme on technology and ethics deals with something that is of paramount importance to the youths in their day to day lives. Videotaping is a technological advance that sees a young girl able to take picture and film of a crime scene.

Ethically, youths should be prevailed upon to observe personal ethics which will ultimately encourage them to live a life that is morally and ethically correct based on the norms of the society.

O’Brien also tells us that morality in a true war story is in itself like a thread which makes the cloth. One can remove it out. This means that one cannot get the meaning without first trying to get a deeper meaning of a situation.

In Videotape, there is also the element of suspense. One keeps on looking not just

because you suspect something is about but also to be able to see the outcome

of the footage.

There is an invisible force that makes one get glued to set even though the film is filmed by a twelve year old girl and therefore it is random, amateurish and accidental. The tape is not in any way boring or interesting but it is blunt and crude. It is relentless on its depiction of the murder and jostles one’s mind.

In “Videotape,” Delillo successfully uses an anonymous narrator to disseminate the

video of a murder, which was filmed unintentionally by a young girl who is aged

twelve, from the television to the reader. The sequence of events that follows as witnessed by the narrator, unfolds to the reader as he watches the video.

In America, the rate of violence shown in the media has been on alarming increase. Many American views many acts of violence and murders, due to the massive violence

found in the media such as news and also videogames. It is therefore right to

state that accessibility of technology has in many ways led to an increase in media violence.

By using the story “Videotape,” Don Delillo categorically argues that the availability and accessibility of technology without any restrictions on society are major causes of the increase of violence in the media since it encourages the Society’s interest in violence.