Obscenity In Truth, By Tim O Brien

Prompt: "You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; and if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty" (O'Brien 69).

Drawing on your reading, knowledge, and experience, write a carefully reasoned essay defending, challenging, or qualifying O'Brien's view of the relationship between truth and obscenity.

Obscenity in Truth Truth and obscenity have a direct correlation, even in everyday life. This is especially true for war stories. The truth in war is very obscene and hard to believe, people change from their normal being and transform into something that helps them survive. Because war stories are
Lemon’s character is one that is easy going, but has a strong sense of pride and manhood. Curt’s manhood had cost him his tooth and his life. He had a terrible fear of dentists ever since he was in high school. This is why when he entered the dentist’s office he fainted, and he had to redeem himself by pulling out his tooth, “The dentist couldn’t find any problem… and yanked out a perfectly good tooth.” (88) Lemon’s decision to pull the tooth was done to prevent a sense of shame, which is a major theme in the novel. Shame leads men in America to the decision to enter the war, and shame also lead to the harm and death of the soldiers. Pulling out a perfectly good tooth is done for self satisfaction and to avoid shame. O’Brien’s use of Lemon was to show how shame can drastically alter a person’s lifestyle and how much people are willing to give up in redeeming themselves. This act would be thought of as obscene by the common person, but in a situation like war man is forced to show strength and no signs of weakness, and what Lemon did took a lot of self applied pressure off him. Lemon’s acts were also shown as shameful and stupid by the way he played with grenades, “Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley were playing catch with smoke grenades.” (70) The game played with this grenade was called “Yellow Mother”, they would pull the pin of a smoke grenade and toss
This is true for characters such as Mary Anne, Azar, and Kiowa. Mary Anne, a character brought up as a civilized home grown girl, changed her entire life going to Vietnam. She became an addict of war, craving it as drug addicts crave drugs. She later disappeared into the night and crossed over into savagery, “She was part of the land now. She was wearing… a necklace of human tongues. She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill.” (116) The necklace of human tongues shows savagery and animosity of Mary Anne. As O’Brien stated she was part of the land now, her id, natural instincts and completely taken control of her. The id’s goal is to get all wants and desires first, no matter how cruel or necessary, and Mary Anne did this she fulfilled her natural instinct to become one with nature and to kill. The image of Mary Anne is a clear example viewing, of the obscenity of the truth. The second example of other characters falling to obscenity is Azar. Azar is the character that is pure id from the start. He lives to kill, “Azar strapped [the puppy] to a claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device.” (36) Similar to the death of the baby water buffalo, Azar killed an orphan puppy, but the purpose of this death was different. Azar has already lost to the id, he was out to fulfill his desires and the id’s desire was to kill anything.