Desensitization and Fungibility

The desensitization of the soldiers is the most significant and noticeable part of Tim O’Brien’s "How to Tell a True War Story." He gives us these characters at their most vulnerable. He introduces the world through Rat Kiley’s story—which is definitely written by an unreliable narrator. It’s quickly evident—the commonplace acts of violence soldiers have become accustomed to—the nastiness, the absurd. The desensitization is evident in Rat’s story home to Kurt Lemon’s sister. He tells her of how he and her brother went “fishing with hand grenades” and says that he will look in on her later. He expects that this act of generosity on his part necessitate gratitude from her. It becomes clear that the extent of this gratitude was perhaps intended to manipulate her. When she does not reply at all she is considered ungrateful. There are other characters besides Rat that give the audience and idea of how—in some respects—a soldiers life is that of children just playing in the forest. We get a scene with two characters—one supposedly the narrator—tossing around smoke grenades. He assures us that the only way a person could get hurt is if they were doing something stupid.  

O’Brien seeks to show us how utterly elusive war is—in doing so, he tries to show us what it is not. Tim O’Brien tells us that the only true war story is full of obscenity, and no one wins. He gives us—almost exclusively—unreliable narrators, telling us that perhaps there are no reliable narrators. By doing this, he does all he can to get us to trust his story, because it cultivates a voice of believable skepticism. It causes us to question the narrator. Similar to the Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” he warns us of stories with morals—ones that purport “the old lie.” The senseless things those characters do, venting rage frustration and anger on bystanders and the environment itself. Perhaps soldiers come to regard these things as fungible. In Rat’s case, the baby water buffalo is definitely an example of this.