Love in War

While reading the chapter "Spin" I fell in love with the poppa-san story. It was done in typical Tim O’Brien fashion, listing off what happened, but the story was still beautiful. I think that Tim O’Brien lists the moments in his anecdotes to keep himself at a safe distance from the past. To really go into great depth and detail of a story is more than just remembering as it happened ( or as best as one can explain what happened ). It means to re-live that moment. To travel back into the past and reconnect with the environment and re-experience all the emotions of that moment. I think that this is something Tim O’Brien tries desperately to avoid. I can’t say that I blame him, especially knowing the context of his stories. Re-living your nightmares and having intense flashbacks are things that cannot be helped. Re-living those awful moments for the sake of retelling a story is something different entirely and can easily be avoided. I believe that O’Brien has firmly mastered this skill.

The poppa-san story expresses a rare moment of sentiment. There is tenderness in this story. Although O’Brien does not go into the background of how the idea of getting a local to guide them through the land or how they acquired the elderly gentleman, he very clearly expresses the affections of the group. O’Brien says, “We all learned to love the old man. It was a sad scene when the choppers came to take us away. Jimmy Cross gave the old poppa-san a hug. Mitchell Sanders and Lee Strunk loaded him up with boxes of C rations. There were actually tears in the old guy’s eyes.” I love this story. Tim O’Brien lets us glimpse the tender and emotional side of the soldiers instead of describing an event and leaving us to sort through the actions, trying to figure how someone truly felt.