Truth In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

Many people assume that when someone is physically gone, they are gone forever. In the chapter “The Lives of the Dead” in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien the author demonstrates that people can, in fact, live on after death through people's thoughts, emotions and imagination with the motif of storytelling.

What is “truth”? In The Things They Carried, the reader has their eyes opened to a new kind of “truth”; a “truth” that is not based on the honesty of events, the “happening-truth”, but the honesty of human nature, the “story-truth.” The novel itself, The Things They Carried, is comprised of many different stories based on the author Tim O’Brien’s service in the Vietnam war. Recalling from memories of his service, Tim O’Brien intricately weaves fact and fiction into his novel to force the reader into a turmoil of emotions by telling “true war stories,” that are not, in fact, war stories. Although many readers believe that “truth” is the act of retelling reality, “truth” is, in O'Brien's reality, the act of portraying emotions; that is why a “true war story” is not about war, but emotions.

The book The Things They Carried is a very touching book that explains what an American soldier went through and the choices they had to make in order to survive. This book is very wistful to me because my grandpa was drafted into the Vietnam war, and he could have very well been one of the men in this story. He also could have had an encounter with something that could kill him like some of the men in The Things They Carried. The author, Tim O'brien, was tangled up in the Vietnam war and is one of the characters in the book. Kiowa, who was in alpha company with Tim O’brien, was shot and perished in Vietnam.

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change” (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein). War can be a drastic change for the life of a person as war can ultimately morph them into a slave of the battlefield. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’ Brien describes the experiences of people in the Vietnam War and how they have become changed individuals from their past lives before combat. War pummels you with things that transcend your typical escapades and the more you try to understand them, the more you get sucked into the void of combat. The increased time the characters are in the battlefield, the more they have to think about it, thus shaping who they are. Only time can determine how much war can affect you.

Very few authors who write fictional stories decide to mix fact with fiction to demonstrate certain ideas, however that is exactly what author Tim O’Brien does in the book The Things They Carried, to demonstrate what these soldiers had carried in the Vietnam War and after the war.

In the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross recalls past stories told by him and from fellow soldiers in his time overseas in Vietnam. Experiences and events soldiers faced in Vietnam can change the way people think, feel, and act.

No war is easy for the soldiers who put their lives on the line to fight for what they believe in. The soldiers on both sides of the Vietnam War faced challenges that changed their lives forever and left a lasting effect on their physical and mental health. The hardships faced in the Vietnam War as depicted in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien are an accurate representation of the struggle faced by not only the soldiers fighting the war but also those who were involved in nonviolent positions.

What good came out of the Vietnam War? The answer may vary depending on the person being asked, but we know one thing for sure, it was the longest and costliest war of the twentieth century for the United States (“Vietnam”). “The war lasted for eleven years and was responsible for the deaths of about 58,000 Americans and more than 3 million Vietnamese” (“Vietnam”). Most the soldiers fighting in the war were draftees that were often young and inexperienced. The brutality on the frontline led to the development of severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder within many of these young soldiers. The nation learned from this war but it came at the expense of a whole generation.

Tim O'Brien gives readers a greater understanding of underlying motivations of soldiers who fought in the Vietnam war in his short story "The Things They Carried." He shows the bond the soldiers share and how that bond helps to hide their fear in order to maintain an honorable reputation. He also depicts the soldiers’ common fear of showing weakness and the ways they hide that fear from the other men in order to avoid being judged. He shows how the men of Alpha Company have the principles of masculinity drilled into their minds, and therefore believe that their reputations hinge upon their manliness. In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” the author uses the brotherhood of the soldiers and the fear of weakness as motivators for the soldiers’ obsession with reputation.

When one tells a story, one has a motive for telling their tale, even if the story is fictional; but as Tim O’Brien, the narrator, says “a true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done” (O’Brien 65). The reader can assume O’Brien tells the story to reveal the horrors of war. O’Brien, the narrator, says a true war story can be told by the way it is evil (O’Brien 65-66). The buffalo story, O’Brien says, is a true war story, despite the story not being true. In the novel The Things They Carried, the author Tim O’Brien uses the buffalo story to back up the claim a true war story is told in a way obscenity and evil.

Uncertainties of pursuits that you may not return from, and living through constant life or death

In the book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, he explores the fine line between reality and fiction. Reality is what really happened. Fiction is fabrication of the situation. Reality is distorted when a situation is serious, emotional, and traumatic. In O'Brien experience, when telling a story from the observer's point of view, the observer unnecessarily adds details to make it more dramatic and animated. Which in turn,the incident changes the story from reality to fiction. The story teller wants the audience to experience what he felt when he experience the event. When the observer highjacks the reality of the story, the audience may not know the facts from the fiction.

In “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, the narrator introduces the reader to the protagonist, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who is in charge of a platoon of soldiers during the Vietnam War. O’Brien initiates by explaining to the reader that to carry something means to “hump”. O’Brien further explains that for our protagonist, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, he specifically “humps” photographs, letters and mementos of the woman he loves, Martha. The lieutenant has such an emotional attachment to everything he receives from Martha, that for him, it becomes problematic through the story since it leads to the death of one of his soldiers in the alpha team. He blames himself because when Lavender is shot, he is distracted, thinking of Martha, when he could’ve

The school board has proposed that works of fiction should be removed from the curriculum of all english classes, that is a not a good choice because making a curriculum is very difficult and lengthy. The students would have to learn how to find themes and lessons in literature without actually putting it into use in the classroom. The board would then have to invest into new textbooks as the ones we have now have works of fiction in them and getting new books is costly.The piece of literature that I will be referring to in this writing the most is a book ‘’The Things They Carried’’ by Tim o’Brien. It is a fictional book that takes place in the Vietnam war and the narrator which happens to be the author is part of a squad in the United states

In conclusion, a personal connection to something that means so little to others can be a huge impact for someone else. In the novel, “The Things They Carried”, the author Tim O’Brien uses pieces of things that had a major impact toward the soldiers and talks about how it prevents insanity. He shows this through symbolism in the characters, like Norman Bowker, Henry Dobbins, including the author himself. All throughout the novel, the author chose to use the soldier's pain in a way that makes them unique. The author expresses how the soldiers dealt with their pain through the war, and Henry Dobbins way of coping was by sniffing his girlfriend's pantyhose while reminiscing the times they had together. That is an example of how the author uses