"How to Tell a True War Story"

I really like this excerpt from "How to Tell a True War Story." I liked how Tim O'Brien rewrote the story over and over in different aspects in hopes of getting to what actually happened to Lemon. He is never able to exact all the details of what actually happened because each time he remembers it, there are new images, different lighting, different people standing around, etc. As I was reading this excerpt, I kept thinking, "Why is he telling us the story again? I already know what happened to him. He died." After finishing the story though, I realized that the point was not that Lemon had died, but how he died and how vivid the image was to O'Brien each time he thought about and reflected on it. I really like that O'Brien tried to tell the story over in order for it to be true to him, not for anyone else. This also happens when Mitchell Sanders tells O'Brien a story about the soldiers in the mountain. He did not know how to tell it so that O'Brien would believe him but he knew it was true. After he had made up some things to the story, he later apologizes to O'Brien and tells him that one thing did not exist but the whole story was still true. This means that Sanders could not live with the fact that he had added details to the story when he knew they were not true to him.

I think this can be applied to any story in general. Stories are told in many different perspectives, but if the person who is telling them believes it to be true in his/her own eyes, then it is.