Question

Read this excerpt about the Vietnam War from Tim O'Brien's "Good Form": I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I'm left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief. Here is the story-truth. He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of My Khe. . . . I killed him. What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again. "Daddy, tell the truth," Kathleen can say, "did you ever kill anybody?" And I can say, honestly, "Of course not." Or I can say, honestly, "Yes." How does the author's specific word choice and stylistic devi

Answer 1

The author’s use of specific words throughout the excerpt allow the audience to better understand the tones of the excerpt and the way the author is feeling while discussing this topic. When reading the excerpt – especially the last paragraph – it is noticeable that the tone is sad and grim, and noticeable that the author is feeling regret. The sentence “Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t” is an indication of the regret and sadness that the author is feeling. The emotion that the author displays affects the tone, causing the tone to convey sadness.

Answer 2

The best answer for this question would be:

The author’s wordings in the excerpt describe how his experience was during the Vietnam war, he was young but was afraid to face reality that his fellow comrades were dying in front of him. He describes how in stories people can be able to twist what had happened to them, on the other hand you could honestly tell them the true events that had happened.