A. Enemies" and "Friends"1. What agreement did Jensen and Strunk make?2. Why did Dave Jensen break his own nose?3. Why was Jensen releived of "an enormous weight" when he learned that Strunk had died? B. "How to tell A True War Story" and "The Dentist"1. Why does this story begin with the line: "This is true?" How does that prepare you for the story? In what sense is "this" true?2. In this story O'Brien relates a number of episodes. What makes these episodes seem true? Or, to put it another way, how does O'Brien lull you into the belief that each of these episodes is true?3. Find a few of O'Brien's elements of a "true war story" such as "A true war story is never moral." Why does O'Brien believe these elements are important to a "true" war story?4. In what sense is a "true" war story true? That is, in O'Brien's terms, what is the relationship between historical truth and fictional truth? Do you agree with his assessment that fictional truth and historical truth do no need to be the same thing?5. According to O'Brien, why are stories important? In your opinion, what do we, as people, need from stories--both reading them and telling them?6. Why is the baby water buffalo scence more disturbing than the death of one of O'Brien's platoon members, Dave Jensen?7. Why does Rat Kiley torture and kill the baby water buffalo? Explain the complex emotions he experiences in this scene?8. Explain how, according to the narrator, war can be both ugly and beautiful.9. O'Brien explains that this story was "not a war story. It was a love story." In what sense is this a "love story?" Why?10. Finally, O'Brien says that "none of it happened. None of it. And even it did happen, it didn't happen in the mountains, it happened in this little village on the Bantangan Peninsula, and it was raining like crazy." If O'Brien is not trying to communicate historical fact, what is he trying to communicate? Why change the details? What kind of truth is he trying to relate, and why is the truth set apart from historical truth? Is it o. k. that this "true" war story may or may not be entirely true?11. What additional things does Tim O'Brien say about war stories at the end of this chapter?12. Why did Curt Lemon want his tooth pulled?