Blog 9 ARB

"Madagascar Plum" is a short story written by Nguyen thi Minh Ngoc and is about a captain in the south Vietnamese military and how he retells his story as an extreme alcoholic, but his story focuses on how he killed a young a child. Once again, we see how the war creates terrible memories and made soldiers do things they never would have imagined doing, and see how PTSD takes over one's life post war.

The Real question of this short story is the reliability of the narrator and how that can relate to how true, or untrue the story he is telling. The narrator is a clear alcoholic which can lead many to believe that he is unreliable and that is a reasonable conclusion, but I think the story that narrator is telling is the reason for his alcoholism and why would someone tell a fake story just because they decided to become an alcoholic. He became an alcoholic for a reason, and the reason is the war and what he took away from the war.

To really think about the reliability of the narrator and his story we must consider how Tim O'Brien views what a true war story is. O'Brien says sometimes the most outrageous things are what really happened even though they are the hardest to believe and this story seem very harsh and critical towards the narrator himself. It is like an admittance to guilt or accepting the responsibility for what he had done. He says "How can I forget if I don't have liquor" which leads me to believe he hasn't forgotten what he has taken from the war because he is still drinking and still a thorough alcoholic.

The story could be be an excuse for his alcoholism and maybe some other part of the war is the reason for his drinking problem, but by telling the story it seems the narrator is trying to salvage the little honor that he might have left from the war because he did shoot his own leg off to get out of battle and he had killed a child so by accepting that responsibility it gives him a sense of reliability but I don't think you can really determine of he is reliable or not because what is a true war story? if you choose to believe it then he reliable if you tend to think the story is an exaggeration then you might think he is unreliable, but even though alcoholism can make people forget and do things they might not be proud of i think the effects of the war and what this narrator might have experienced cannot be made up just because he is an alcoholic.