Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Throughout the book, O’Brien repeatedly states his struggles in telling “a true war story.” One of the obstacle he faces in telling “a true war story” is the readers’ misconception that “truth” must be an event and not an emotion. To begin, O’Brien claims “A true war story is never moral… If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted… then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie… you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (68-69) and “All of us… like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth” (38). In these two statements, O’Brien has shown us that people want not a

O’Brien’s unification of fact and fiction is to illustrate the idea in which the real accuracy of a war story is less significant than storytelling. The subjective truth about what the war meant and what it did to change the soldiers is more meaningful than the technical details of the

The short story that will be discussed, evaluated, and analyzed in this paper is a very emotionally and morally challenging short story to read. Michael Meyer, author of the college text The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, states that the author of How to Tell a True War Story, Tim O’Brien, “was drafted into the Vietnam War and received a Purple Heart” (472). His experiences from the Vietnam War have stayed with him, and he writes about them in this short story. The purpose of this literary analysis is to critically analyze this short story by explaining O’Brien’s writing techniques, by discussing his intended message and how it is displayed, by providing my own reaction,

Through telling and retelling these people’s stories O’Brien (and any character doing the storytelling) is preserving and extending the people’s lives. Most of the stories and characters in this novel are made up; this much O’Brien admits to. Only through exaggerating and inventing stories, O’Brien argues, can the true sentiments of the stories and the people in them be conveyed. O’Brien admits that he “invented incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain” what it was like to go through the war (O’Brien, 107). Only through these inventions can we truly begin to understand who the characters are and how they were affected by the events that took place in the

Lots of people go through experiences that change their lives because they served their country and went to war. The soldiers go through many traumatic events while serving that make them undergo changes. In the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, has characters who set a great example as to how their life changes during and after the war.

The Things They Carried is a breathtaking and captivating powerful war story memoir, which is beautifully and intensely well written by Tim O Brien. The novel explores the physical and emotional trauma of the Vietnam War and its impact on soldiers fears. The author and protagonist Tim O’ Brien communicates provoking nonlinear narratives or frame stories through his own point of view presenting the audience with a window into the disturbing widespread, endless, and meaningless death, violence, and savagery in war-torn Vietnam. The author cleverly uses different literary devices such as imagery, irony, symbolism, repetition and figurative language to grab the reader’s attention and convey his message and purpose for storytelling. By telling the haunting tragic stories of young soldiers whose lives were largely forgotten by society despite their opposition to the war and to reflect the real gripping emotional truth of what it was like to be a soldier in Vietnam and a veteran suffering from the memories of it. Through O’Brien vivid description of the war, which was such a significant event in American history, he distinguishes the physical, emotional and psychological aspect of war. The characters in the story are depicted memorably and their identities represent the different aspects of human nature and their struggle with guilt and purpose.

To make the reader question the stories, O’Brien observes that stories can be changed to prove different points. He notes that different stories can make you feel better or worse. However, O’Brien also explains that absolutely true war stories are never as glamorous as their false counterparts, such as those in films. They don’t provide a reader with the confusing nature of war, but rather false stories do because they can be misconstrued to make the reader understand the feelings of a soldier. This answers part of the central question by showing how soldiers feel about

In the Chapter “Good Form,” O’Brien states that “story truth” is a more effective way to tell what happened during the Vietnam War than “happening truth” or historical truth. Journalists and historians would disagree arguing that historical truth shows the facts which people can learn from and make more informed decisions in the present than they did in the past. By contrast, story truth, according to O’Brien is a fictionalized account of the war which presents some facts but mostly the feelings and highly personal perspective of the soldiers. The passages staging what might have happened, while simultaneously questioning the accuracy and credibility of the narrative acts itself. By forcing the readers to experience the impossibility of ever knowing with any certainty what actually happened, O’Brien liberates himself from the lonesome responsibility of remembering and trying to understand the events. O’Brien believes that stories contain immense power, since they allow tellers and listeners to confront the past together and share otherwise unknowable experiences.Although O’Brien is a Vietnam War veteran, unwillingly drafted in 1968 and serving until 1970, he purposively fictionalizes the war experience throughout The Things They Carried while simultaneously insisting that the essence of the work is true, a notion that many scholars question. His credentials for war stories establish a premise for the rest of the collection

Throughout Tim O 'Brien 's experience as an author, his contribution to the American voice consisted of his grandiose style of writing, using experiences from Vietnam and the Cold war to shape his stories. His contribution to the American voice is unique as he not only includes deep physical and psychological elements into his works, but also uses unorthodox methods to blur the lines between what really happened to characters (and what happened to Tim O’Brien during his life). Tim O’Brien’s experiences in Vietnam shaped his unique writing style, while this particular style created deep description of the physical and psychological effects of war, while incorporating this from his own personal experience into his own works. Through Tim O’Brien’s use of personal experience during the Vietnam and Cold war, he creates a uncanny style of writing that makes an imperative contribution to the American voice.

Tim O’brien, an American novelist, has a complex, but creative meaning in his story “How To Tell a True War Story”. My interpretation of the story is that the person telling a story has the power to create the connection between the reader's opinion, emotion, and the story being told. Throughout the text O’brien proves this by making statements to support his claim, but then contradicts himself afterwards. In this story O’brien uses a war story because of the conflicting information giving from the story and what actually had happened. To make a connection between the reader's opinion and the story Tim O’brien uses examples of what he is trying to interpret within the story.

Tim O’Brien’s short story “How to Tell a True War Story” details memories from O’Brien’s time in the vietnam war. It explores the concept of truth, and challenges its definition by asserting that there are certain truths about war which are more important than the actual facts and details of the event. O’Brien tells the story of his friend Bob “Rat” Kiley witnessing the death of their friend Curt Lemon. He also shares the story told to him by his friend Mitchell Sanders about a group of listening post soldiers that grow hysteric listening to the vietnamese jungle. He uses these war stories as examples to show how even when the exact facts are misconstrued, they are still true stories because

How to Tell a True war Story Predominantly, How to Tell a True War Story is a story that delves deep into the relationship that exists between storytelling and war experience. The story is told halfway from O’Brien’s role as a soldier and as a reprise of a plethora of Vietnam stories. The other half is told from his role as a storyteller as a discourse on the storytelling art. Accordingly, O’Brien’s story shows that a storyteller has the power to shape the readers’ opinions and experiences. In the same way, O’Brien story distorts one’s perception on the right and the wrong.

One of the most glorious stories that is in this book would be “How To Tell a True War Story”. Tim O’Brien explains everything thing about war. The colors, the smells, the intense feeling. “In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes it own happening and has to be told that way.” (68). This quote is followed by Tim’s angle of Curt Lemon’s death. Tim explains how a true war story may not be believable, pictures get jumbled and that moment in time may get erased. True war stories are from a soldier's opinion, not a civilian that was not there. A war story in the

Have you ever wonder if a fiction can be a true story? The novel The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien will make you reconsider the facts behind a fiction story as it brings several levels of truth to the readers. The novel is the collection of twenty-two stories about Vietnam War, which can be put separately as individual story, but can also be well tie together. O’Brien’s writing style is so vivid that the readers usually find themselves believe the events and details of his novel as true facts, even though the work is dedicate as fiction. And that is how he has redefining what is the “truth” to the readers.

O’Brien presents that the way to know a true war stories is in the details, in the seeming. One person can not comprehend everything that happens in an event. He says