Topics Essay #2 - FINAL DRAFT DUE: SECOND DAY OF CLASS THE WEEK OF FEB. 22nd

Choose ONE of the following for your second essay; make sure you use specific details/evidence/examples from "On the Rainy River," "Spin," "Enemies," "Friends," "How to Tell a True War Story" and "The Dentist," to support your thesis statement. Make sure your thesis statement is explicit and in the first paragaph. Your title should anticipate your topic, but remember: the title alone is not a thesis. Regarding length: minimum of three pages with clearly related, logically organized and fully explained details/evidence/examples.

1. There is a continuing emphasis on truth as this novel progresses, but "truth" begins to take on a more complex meaning. Discuss the difference between the importance of the "story-truth" and the "happening-truth" in relevance to O'Brien's stories and how he uses fiction to reveal truth in these episodes. How does O'Brien (the author) use autobiographical elements (as in "On the Rainy River")as well as observed incidents among soldiers ("Spin," "Enemies," "Friends," and "The Dentist") and even magical realism to convey emotional truth in his novel? In what way does O'Brien seem to prove that fiction can become a greater truth than reality?

2. Through the stories listed above, Tim O'Brien, the author, continues to depict paradoxical situations (two circumstances that are opposite which should not exist at the same time, but do). Explain the most profound paradoxes--the character O'Brien's situation at the conclusion of "On the Rainy River," the relationship between Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen, Azar's innocent cruelty, and the beauty of life, death and war to the narrator in "How to Tell a True War Story." What is O'Brien's point in using these paradoxes? In what way is truth itself, at least in O'Brien's work, an ironic paradox?

3. From "How to Tell a True War Story," choose four specific qualities the narrator O'Brien insists a war story must possess in order to be considered "true." Use specific examples and evidence from each of the stories studied in this section (and listed above), to confirm that the novel is, indeed, a "true war story." In the course of the conclusion, explain why a storyteller like Mitchell Sanders or Tim O'Brien would change fundamental facts of the story to get to make the story "true."