Six - How to Tell a True War Story

In this chapter, O'Brien discusses how to discern the truth from a war story, and provides some truly charming examples from a squad firebombing a Vietnamese glee club to Rat Kiley gradually dismantling a buffalo with his M16. Now, I could talk about what all of these individual stories all mean ad infinitum (look at me using Latin, oh ho), so I'll just zoom in on one little thing he wrote that I found particularly intriguing: "That proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life" (p. 77). I guess the reason why this struck me as so important was because I've seen this theme of death, or near-death, bringing on a new appreciation for life in many other places. The most prominent of which I found a while ago in my recent reading of the novel Shōgun by James Clavell. Anjin-san, the protagonist, suffers a bitter insult, and thus decides to commit suicide, but is stopped by the others present. This near death experience causes Anjin-san to take on a new perspective for life, allowing him to appreciate it more fully. Another example of this concept is the song "Life is Beautiful" by Sixx:A.M. The general premise of the song is that "When you've lost it all, that's when you realize that life is beautiful." I just made a connection between Feudal Japan, Vietnam, and modern rock. There should be a literary term for that.

This is a samurai. He was in Shōgun.