What are the things that make up a beautiful story like O’Brien had made The Things They Carried? It is simply the two terms known as cruelty and truth. Cruelty, to me, is defined as the sheer pain and suffering of another person or animal. Truth also plays a big part in this book, and truth, to me, is telling what happened and not misdirecting someone to think otherwise. O’brien’s standpoint on cruelty is making something just brutal and having to make it your lifestyle. HIs definition of truth is telling what happened in the situations that went on. There are points in the book and in life where truth and cruelty stand apart, but is there ever a point where they come together and do something they can’t do with only themselves? Truth is defined as telling everything possible that happened without misdirecting someone to think otherwise. “A true war story is never moral.” O’brien says this because if a war story has moral to it then that means the person is putting together certain events to create pictures that don’t exist in order for the audience to feel less disturbed or …show more content…
“What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end...” Truth and cruelty both make this strong because O’brien has experienced terrible things in the war that made him put the memories on repeat, and because of these memories being so cruel and harsh, they stuck with him so every single detail is a true detail of what happened. “...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered.” Not only is it the experiences that make this, it is the strong intense feelings of things. Some people love so strong that it becomes engulfing in their own lives feeling imprisoned knowing that they don’t get to see the certain someone ever again or they other person doesn’t love them