|
|
In the short story “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien and the excerpt from Catch-22 by Joseph Heller we see that in war survival is not only meant physically, the more important is the psychological survive which is not given, when the insanity grows. In this constellation truth changes. In war, sometimes the truth seems so hard and unnecessary and a lie could be a guarantee for survival. In the O’Brien story, truth is a very important idea as the title shows. There is shown that in war truth is ambiguous and has changed totally: “The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong.” (O’Brien 181) And that is the problem for the sanity. How can one know what is true, what is right. When you watch the beauty of the war, “the harmonies of sound” what “commands you” (181), your real life is in danger too, because lead by the beauty you may do dangerous things without thinking. And is this right? Is this the truth of the war? Nobody knows, and in fact you are alone with your one interpretation of truth and the loss of sanity. In some cases the hard truth has a direct influence to a person involved into the war. We have Bob Kiley, who lost his best friend in the war. This is the first step to his insanity.
|
