The "Light" in How to Tell a True War Story

1."A nature hike, they thought, not even a war, so they went off into the shade of some giant trees—quadruple canopy, no sunlight at all—and they were giggling and calling each other motherfucker and playing a silly game they’d invented."

     The sunlight here means bad expectation. They never expect they would die here or even get injured, it is just like a hike.

2."I remember the smell of moss. Up in the canopy there were tiny white blossoms, but no sunlight at all, and I remember the shadows spreading out under the trees where Lemon and Rat Kiley were playing catch with smoke

grenades"

     The sunlight here turn out to be different, it represent the sign of life. Although Rat still can see some plant, but Lemon is no longer alive.

3."They were just goofing. There was a noise, I suppose, which must’ve been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrowwaisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms."

     The sunlight in this paragraph it means heaven and holy spirit.

4."I heard this one, for example, from Mitchell Sanders. It was near dusk and we were sitting

at my foxhole along a wide, muddy river north of Quang Ngai. I remember how peaceful the

twilight was. " 

     Twilight here means the hope of ending this cruel war and go back to peaceful life.

5."...But if I could ever get the story right, how the sun seemed to gather around him and pick him up and lift him into a tree, if I could somehow recreate the fatal whiteness of that light, the quick glare, the obvious cause and effect, then you would believe the last thing Lemon believed, which for him must’ve been the final truth." 

     Here the light is complicated. It superficially refers to the mine killed Lemon, but I think it also means the change of their perspective about the war. There is no moral in the war.