Response to "How To Tell A War Story" excerpt from Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"

     This excerpt started off with a very frantic, casual dialogue-type delivery.  It threw me off almost immediately, and reminded me of a rant fit for a character in a Scorsese or Tarantino movie.  Then the opening paragraphs were revealed to be mostly made up of a letter written by a second author, and the contrast in styles became very apparent.  Tim O'Brien's delivery is a very calculated and heavy handed.  As the piece unfolds, it weaves in and out of different war stories and what about them is or is not important or true.  All of these different war stories keep leading back to the one mentioned in the opening letter segment.
    I really started to become immersed in this narrative when the author tells the story of the men who must crouch quietly in the mountains and do nothing but listen for signs of the enemy.  When the men start to hear the strange party noises and music, the story started to reveal itself cinematically in my head.  I could see the character telling the story, and I could feel where the director might cut away and show visions of these fantastical things happening.  This war story really played with the concepts of truth and reality.  Was some of this story or any of this story true?  Did it matter?  What was the moral of this story?  Is that even important?  Whether the story was true or not, or just exaggerated,  doesn't take away from the power of the story.  If the story did truly take place, could the silence in a man's own head be enough to evoke all of these fantastic ideas?  Sure, why not.
     As far as moral issues go, the most obvious cross of the line might be seen in the slaughter of the buffalo.  It was a gruesome telling of the actions.  Was it necessary to murder an innocent animal?  Absolutely not.  Does it matter, though?  His friend was murdered.  Was that necessary?  Morals in war seem to have a very different connotation than the morals that are instilled in us as children.  When war is declared, the rules change.  The lines begin to blur.
     War is hell...or is it?

The old man is lonely.

The old man sat in a rocking chair on the porch of his old wooden home in the Everglades.  The stagnant smell of the swamp in the air was only matched by the bourbon on his breath.  The man picked up his banjo and attempted to tune the rusted strings.  As his fingers plucked expertly, a Great Blue Heron flew down and rested on the reeds near the old man's feet.  The bird seemed to listen intently for a couple minutes, and the old man cracked a smile.  This was his best audience in years.  Abruptly, one of the banjo's strings broke.  The clanging sound startled the heron, and he up and flew away.  The old man sighed and put down his banjo.  He stood up slowly, and walked inside of his home to a framed picture on his living room wall.  Tears welled up in his eyes as he remembered his estranged bride.

Letter regarding missed class

Dear Conrad,
     I apologize for missing last night's class.  I understand that our class only meets bi-weekly at best, but some situations are dire enough not to need explanation.  If I feel comfortable with disclosing the reasons in better detail in the future i will.  I hope you can understand the lack of detail in my response, but at this point it is necessary.
     Thank you for understanding,
                                          Joshua

Bob,
   I had had the best day.  I met a really cool hippy chick at the Whitefish Farmer's Market the other day, and I randomly ran into her again at the brewery today.  We had a couple beers, and we had such a good time that I forgot to go to class.  it was worth it, though, I got her number!
    Josh

Dialouge Exercise

      Tanya and Dean shuffled their feet slowly while returning home from a punk rock show in downtown Cincinatti.  It was after three in the morning, and all of the moshing and slam dancing had left Tanya famished.
     "Let us go out to breakfast,"Tanya proclaimed hungrily,"How much money do you have?"
     "Let me look," Dean dug his stubby fingers into the deep pockets of his blue jeans. The sound of jangling change echoed loudly as he pulled his hands from his pockets, "I have got about thirty-five cents."
     "Thirty-five cents?!"Tanya exclaimed angrily while quietly wondering why she had ever dated Dean in the first place.
    

Have you ever been charged by a bear?

Everyone had been talking about it.  The Skyline Experience.  It was one of the essential off trail routes in Glacier National Park.  Twenty miles or so.  Three peaks.  Not much technical climbing, but very intense nonetheless.  It seemed groups were going up almost every day and coming home with stories about how amazing the trek was.  I wanted a part of it.  One day I was approached by a couple of guys I worked with at Many Glacier Hotel asking if I wanted to give the route a try.  I hadn’t hiked with any of the guys before, but one of them, Jake, had done it before so I told them I was in.  I later ran the idea by my girlfriend, Kelly, that if she wanted to come along she could.  She is a very strong hiker and a tough person in general, so I knew she could handle such a long day.  We had both hiked up many mountains in the park together, but mostly on trail to fire lookouts.  After a few days she decided she would come along.  On the morning of the hike we were all supposed to meet in the employee dining room just before sunrise.  It was getting late in the season so we knew we were going to have to fight to get home before sunset.  After a quick trip to the car for a can of bearspray we headed to the EDR.  My girlfriend pointed out that we only had one can of spray for three people, but I, of course, assured her we would be just fine.  I had avoided so many bear confrontations that summer anyway.  Upon arriving at the EDR we found out quickly our potential group of five or six had dwindled down to just three: my girlfriend, Jake, and myself.  We loaded up on water and free EDR food and headed towards the Cracker Lake trail.  The Cracker Trail is very popular with tourists, but not so much employees.  The destination is breathtaking, but the trail is under heavy tree cover and, even worse, it is a shared horse trail.  This means more often than not a very muddy and smelly hike.  Luckily it was quite a nice morning on the trail, and we were making very good time.  It seemed like no time before Jake announced, “Last chance to fill up on water here.  We’re going off trail.”  We climbed up slippery boulders for a couple of minutes before deciding to cut left into the trees.  It was a pretty easy bushwack.  There were no major scrapes or bruises even in shorts and a t-shirt.  We must’ve gained a good amount of elevation in the trees, because soon enough we were above treeline.  At this point I began to feel the after effects of the previous night’s drinks.  We were climbing hand and foot over rock scree and I was quickly becoming the slowest member of the group.  As we neared eight thousand feet or so I had begun to sweat so hard that in no time I could move pretty quickly again.  This made the final stretch to the summit of Mt. Wynn much more pleasant.  It was a very warm ascent,  but the summit was desert-like and wind swept so on came the jackets.  The three of us stopped for a quick snack and admired the views of Lake Sherburne and the miles and miles of flat terrain stretching eastward across the Blackfoot Reservation.  From here the route was a long exposed ridgeline leading on the next summit, Cracker Peak.  Nearing the summit of the reddish Cracker Peak was the most technical part.  We experienced mostly class three and a couple class four moves with some pretty serious exposure.  It was more than four thousand feet directly down to Cracker Lake and we were depending on handholds and footholds to keep us from going swimming.  Once on Cracker’s summit we took another break to fuel up and calm the nerves.  Then on to the final push.  Mt Siyeh.  One of only six ten thousand foot peaks in the Park.  In all truth we had done most of the hard work to that point already so the final push ended up being quite pleasant.  When we reached the summit the view was unmatched.  Grinnel Glacier, Jackson Glacier, all five of the other ten thousand foot peaks were viewable from the top as well as a nice view into southern Canada.  After we rested on top for thirty minutes and took a couple of pictures it was time to head home.  We chose to return home via the Piegan Pass trail which should have made for a pretty easy return.  My companions and I walked down large scree fields attempting to connect ourselves to the Piegan Pass trail.  We were thrown off track though when I noticed a lone male grizzly bear who seemed interested in us in the distance.  There were many areas where my girlfriend and I were getting cliffed out so it took us much longer to reach the trail than we had planned on.  Jake must’ve known the terrain much better than we did, because before we realized it he was gone.  The cliffing out continued, and our happy day rapidly turned into a sour one.  We were having difficulty descending and to make matters worse our guide was nowhere to be seen.  This ordeal stretched over a few hours.  We kept screaming out Jake’s name…but no reply.  Finally we could see where the Cataract drainage met the trail, and we knew we were getting close.  We screamed for Jake again, and finally we heard a reply.  Once I spotted him we rush down to meet him.  I didn’t know whether to hug him or hit him.  It was good to see him, but he left us alone on the mountain!  I was quickly calmed down when Jake explained that he had run out of water and he had no filter on him.  He was famished!  So we filtered him some water from a nearby stream.  At this point we all felt much better, but it was getting very dark and we still had five or six miles ahead of us.  It was time to head home.  The three of us began conversing loudly about our experiences away from each other, and all seemed well again.  Jake pointed out to me a small grizzly cub he saw in the distance, and we both looked at it from a safe distance.  Kelly didn’t seem to notice the bear at all.  It was then that we heard the oddest of noises.  A very loud HUFF HUFF HUFF HUFF!  I looked up to see what the noise was and witnessed the most terrifying thing I have ever seen.  It was a large female grizzly, drooling, huffing, and running straight toward us at full speed.  I have been bluff charged by bears before, but this was different.  It wasn’t a test.  There was something different in it’s eyes.  This bear wanted to murder us.  It wanted us dead.  All the things I had been trained to do in this situation vanished from my brain.  There was only one can of bearspray between the three of us, and Kelly had it.  She picked it up and pointed it at the bear.  Her hand was shaking and the look in her eyes was blank.  She wanted to spray the bear, but not yet.  It wasn’t close enough.    Jake, not knowing her well, put his hands over Kelly’s and forced the can to spray.  The red-orange stream flew from the can and hit the mother bear.  The grizzly only stopped momentarily and let out a painful huff, then she continued toward us.  At this point we all linked arms and at no further than twenty feet away released almost the entire remainder of the bearspray canister.   You could tell this really hurt the bear.  She huffed and puffed and sneezed and seemed to think about whether or not she should attempt to approach us again.  After a few seconds she mustered up one last front, but this time she was much slower and obviously in a great deal of pain.  This attack ended when the mother bear realized she didn’t have it in her.  She turned and started to stumble back toward her cub.  Terrified we realized we could no longer follow the trail.  It was too close to the grizzly family.  We attempted to head back to the base of Mt. Siyeh and bushwack home from there, but before long we noticed three or four more bears in the distance.    So tired of bears!  At that point in the day I was done with bears.  I never wanted to see the wretched creature again!  So we decided to head directly through the middle of the two groups of bears until we were far enough away from them to rejoin the trail.  When the trail was finally spotted we turned on our headlamps and started screaming “hey Bear!” at the top of our lungs.  The shouting continued for several miles.  We hiked harder and faster than ever, but still the final few miles of the trip seemed to be some of the longest moments of my life.  When our group returned to the employee dorms there was a crowd of people there on the steps.  They said they could hear our screams for at least thirty minutes prior to arriving back at the dorms.  Our story spread through the night, and when the next morning came another group headed off to tackle the trek.   Bear or not, the Skyline Experience is just that…an experience.  An experience everyone wants to be a part of and one I will never forget.