The Mythology of Merry Anne Bell
The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong forces O’Brien’s readers to question the difference between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood. In “How to Tell a True War Story,” O’Brien claims that though a story may be fiction, it can hold more truth than a story that is fact. Though blurring the line between truth and fiction may seem like paradox, according to O’Brien, it was a paradox that every Vietnam soldier faced. The reader is told that a factual story from Vietnam would often contain a superimposed moral or lesson, therefore factual stories could not be true. “There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue” (pg. 65). Truth in the forests of Vietnam, according to O’Brien, was abstract. A true story would be crafted to fill in details such as emotions, introduce seemingly mystic or mythic occurrences, or created to entertain or stun its audience. “All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up a few things to get at the real truth” (pg. 81). ...