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English - How to tell a true war story - Coggle Diagram
English - How to tell a true war story
Truth
"This is true"
Immediately suggests that in bringing this up, it is in contrast to the other stories, which are false
"A true war story is never moral"
Demonstrates the pointlessness and terrible nature of war
There is no moral, no justification of war, only trauma
Subverts the story of the quiet told by Mitchell Sanders, not true as there is a moral
Again alludes to truth of the story, not necesaarrilly in fact but in the idea it potrays
Stories are coping methods designed to express "everything you can't ever say"
"Hard and exact truth as it seemed"
Contradictory statement, alludes to the nature of truth as the perceptions and emotion of the soldiers, rather than the hard facts
Idea that trith, especially regarding the Vietnam war, is subjective, as there is no way to prove what actually happened and everyones memory is affected and warped
"It all happened"
again refers to the irrelevance of factual truth, rather the turn of ideas of stories and what happened in the minds of the soldiers
Story of Rat killing buffalo out of anger
Nonsensical, pointless and cruel violence superficially indicates the war being pointless violence and cruelty
However, the story also indicates the idea that the truth sometimes doesn't make sense; that "generalisations" don't sit right as truth, and some times there is no making sense of the things that happened
Only way to express and evoke the feelings and emotions, the soldiers real truth, is through stories
Relates to Albert Camus' absurdism, that the search for meaning, and the "truth" is pointless, as we live in a nonsensical and meaningless universe
Juxtapositon: "War is grotesque...war is beauty....war is thrilling... war is drudgery" parallel structure
Again indicates confusing and nonsensical nature of truth, unable to be expressed unless through a story
Relates to Albert Camus' philosophy of absurdism, oxymoron suggests the confusing and elusive nature of a 'truth' or meaning to life, pointless search
"In the midst of evil you want to be a good man"
"Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true"
"never more alive than when you're almost dead"
"True war story never about war"
Suggests the way in which war, an extreme of human existence and conflict, evokes the extremes of human nature, and exposes the other things which we miss in everyday life, brings small qualities tangibility
"if there's a moral at all, its like the thread that makes the cloth...you can't extract the meaning without unravelling the deeper meaning"
Relates to search for meaning and Albert Camus' absurdism, search for meaning or universal truth pointless, like Sisyphus rolling a boulder
"Not quite pinning down the final and definitive truth"
"Never seems to end. Not then, not ever"
Endless roll of boulder up the hill, Sisyphus