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Things They Carried

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In the book “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien writes about his experience before and during the Vietnamese War, tells stories about his troop, and their lives before and after the war. He illustrates about how his life changed because of the war, and emphasizes on how the war is so cruel and has no moral at all. His stories involve a lot about Vietnamese War. If people read his story superficially, they will say it is definitely a war story, but he argues that his book is actually about love (81). Although his story looks like a war story, it is actually a loved story because his stories are either about his loved ones or dedicated to his loved ones. The reason that O’Brien went to war is because of his love to the people around him. …show more content…

His art of storytelling makes readers reach to the Vietnam War instead of getting actual facts about the war. In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story”, he illustrates about how Rat Kiley tortured a baby water buffalo and killed him cruelly by writing “He shot randomly, almost casually, quick little spurts in the belly and butt” (75). According to this evidence, we can see that it is just act of cruelty and gore since he is emphasizing his friend slowly killing an innocent baby buffalo. But if we look at it closely, it is a love story. O’Brien started his chapter with Rat Kiley writing a sincere letter to his deceased best friend, Curt Lemon’s sister about how he feel sorry and how he will take care of her after the war (64-65). Therefore, if we trace things back a little bit, we can clearly see that O’Brien is writing that way to express his fellow soldier’s sorrow of losing his best friend. His writing style is unique in a way that he doesn’t express the feelings just bluntly. He could just add words that emphasizes sadness, but instead, he added the act of his friend to show the underlying feeling about one during the war. Therefore, after reading about that chapter, people will say they were so cruel during the war, but if they think deeply, all chapter is about the writer’s friend grieving for his dead

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