Beauty in the Breakdown

I think that the contradictions Tim O'Brien uses in his "How To Tell A True War Story" make it very apparent to the reader that war very severely messes with your emotions and logic. 

"War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and

adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love.

War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you

dead."

 

You experience so many things during war, like witnessing a best friend goofing around one second, and then gone the next, or hearing voices and music in the mountains, or even the dead spooky silence of the mountains. You experience beautiful things, not just because they are intrinsically beautiful--like the rivers and sunlight and tiny white blossoms in the jungle--but also because you wake up knowing this day could be your last and you grow to appreciate the beauty all around you. There is sorrow and pain from lost loved ones, and love in the letters written home, but then there is also anger that comes from frustration with those who don't listen or "cooze" who don't write back. There is boredom and silliness with hand grenade catches, and anxiety and fear with enemy watches.

 

So many thoughts and experiences seem to flood these soldiers during war that how could they not take those thoughts and experiences home with them? How could they just part with them when all is said and done? Not being affected by war, even with such extremes like PTSD I think would make us inhuman. And even someone as seemingly inhumane as manifesting your pain by shooting up a baby water buffalo is really just another example of how human we are. There is no "right" way to deal with death or trauma; everyone goes through it differently, some more easily than others. 

 

"Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms."

I like what Elizabeth said about the metaphor of shadows and light. Maybe in the way that the light exposes the truth about the gruesome aspects of war, maybe it also brings in another contradiction of how beautiful Lemon's death was when the sunlight touched his face just moments before. Maybe the sunlight is death, because during war, death can be grotesque and violent, but also beautiful and peaceful. I think that's what Tim O'Brien is trying to tell us.