A Brief Review Of The Things They Carried 'By Tim O' Brien

Tim O’ Brien’s book ‘The Things They Carried’ is a series of stories about the Vietnam War. Although all chapters in this book are related to the Vietnam War, each story transmits a different message to the readers and is narrated in different ways. In this essay, I have analyzed two stories to find the themes of each one and through what they are expressed. In “How to tell a true war story”, the author narrates two stories of the men in the Alpha Company and throughout the stories he disputes whether they are real or fabricated. On the other hand, in “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, Rat Kiley tells the story of his first assignment in the isolated mountains of Chu Lai. In this story, the author exposes the idea of how war can significantly

In “How to Tell a True War Story”, the main theme is how to tell whether a war story is true or made-up. The author explores the conflict within reality and fiction by arguing that true war stories are hard to believe. In O’Brien’s view, he points out that “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”(p.80). Moreover, to make his point, the author spins between facts and fiction causing difficulty for the readers to believe if those stories actually happened or

His stories are images of his own experiences in the war, as he is the narrator and main character in most of the stories. Some of his points of view are how war is an ambiguous thing and how it changes people. For instance, in “How to tell a true war story” the author reflects on the feelings of being alive after a fight, proposing that war is hell but also many other things. In O’Brien’s words “You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self- your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it. In the midst of evil, you want to be a good man. You want decency. You want justice and courtesy and human concord, things you never knew you wanted.” (p.77) The author also suggests that the characters in this story had to choose a way of living or a cultural identity instead of taking elements from the Vietnamese culture and blending them in a comfortable way to live in. Most notably, the two chapters differ in the themes explored and in the position that the author assumes. However, they both illustrate how war can quite change