Through the use of metafiction, O’Brien emphasizes that the difference between truth and fiction mirrors the uncertainty of war, helping the readers to understand the soldiers’ experiences. In How To Tell a True War Story, O’Brien remarks, “in war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true” (52). O’Brien uses How to Tell a True War Story to emphasize that the concept of truth is dialectical; although he uses the word “true” in the title of the chapter, the readers know that what he writes is part-fiction and part-truth. He openly admits when something in his story is fictional, purposefully mixing what is real and what is not in order to convey the complexities of war. His idea of “[losing] sense of the definite” references the uncertainty of war and explains why he uses metafiction: to create uncertainty for the readers to help them understand what it was like to be a soldier in the Vietnam War.
In Good Form, O’Brien says, “I want you to feel what I felt… What stories can do, I guess, is make things present… I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again” (115). O’Brien addresses the reader directly in order to deepen the understanding between himself and the reader, emphasizing his sincerity through the words: “I want you to feel what I felt.” By speaking on the usage of stories, O’Brien is both acknowledging the fictional aspect of his work and the truths that are embedded within. In this quote, it is the writer O’Brien who is looking back on the events that passed during the war and adding his thoughts on the events years later; he’s reflecting on . While writing this book may have alleviated O’Brien’s trauma, the book is ultimately not about him as a person-- it is about the nature of war and the ways in which he and the other soldiers coped or did not cope with their experiences.
Similarly, in Notes, O’Brien comments, “by telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others” (101). O’Brien “objectifies his experience” and thus distances himself from the events that occurred. By using metafiction to tell his story, he forces the reader to experience the same uncertainty that the soldiers in the war faced. Because of the traumatic nature of the war, the soldiers often cannot remember exact details of what occured and find themselves looking for ways to cope; this uncertainty of war is conveyed through metafiction and the confusion within the book of truth versus fiction and the idea that whether or not the events were true or false does not matter.
love! one of the things i love about the o'brien book is the intensity of reflection on what it means to write memoir, to write truth--especially when the truth is also trauma.