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Theme Of Truth In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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How does one discern truth? For Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, there is no singular definition of truth -- at least not one he could find while trekking through the war-torn Vietnamese countryside in the 1960s. O’Brien uses his personal experiences in Vietnam to craft a series of anecdotes considered fictional, written from the perspective of an American foot soldier ironically named “Tim.” In a seemingly random chapter of the novel, O’Brien directly addresses the readers by suggesting that the stories are entirely fabricated. He then implies that the idea of the stories being fabricated is also a fallacy. In the context of this ambiguity, O’Brien introduces two perceived forms of truth he refers to as “happening truth” and “story truth.” Happening truth is a raw, unprocessed event whereas story truth is built upon the actual event but transformed by hindsight. By establishing a binary between happening truth and story truth, O’Brien prompts his readers to question the validity of writing as a whole. A deconstructionist would read Tim O'Brien's book and recognize that Vietnam, although a polarizing subject, is not the true center of the text; Vietnam is but a stage on which O’Brien’s binary …show more content…

The passage of time can also introduce play into a text. Language is considered an ever-evolving form because humans continuously refine, expand, and alter established definitions. As years pass, these alterations result in the warping of a text as more play occurs.
Time creates an inherent degradation of writing whereas a loss of subject is controlled by the reader. Within deconstructionism, this subject is called the center of a text. The center of the text drives a story or speech forward by inspiring the emotions, actions, and reactions of the characters or speaker. In The Things They Carried, the text is centered by

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