How Does Tim O Brien Use Story Telling In The Things They Carried

The book The Things They Carried, written and narrated by Tim O’Brien, tells many stories of Alpha Company before, after and during the infamous Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien’s narration helps the reader understand the theme of Storytelling. The stories and chapters that highlight this theme the most are; The Lives of the Dead, which talks about O’Brien’s early friend Linda, The Man I Killed, which talks about the man Tim O’Brien killed and Good form, which delves into the truth about telling a real war-story.

O’Brien had told stories about a girl he was in love with when he was younger. Linda was the love of his life at age nine and she loved him just as much. Their love is shown when O’Brien Narrates; “Linda was nine the then, as I was, but we

It was first triggered post-war when his daughter Kathleen asked him if he had ever killed someone else. Instinctively his answer was no, however, this was not the truth. O’Brien took the reader back to Vietnam on a night where he was on guard along a path. A young Vietnamese man, who was armed, came into view down the track. Without intention to kill, merely just to warn the man off, O’Brien through a grenade in his direction. The man froze with fear after taking two steps away from the grenade and died instantly. The scenes of the dead body were horrific and O’Brien stood in front of the body for some time staring, and beating himself up over it. Two accounts of how those events in the night on that beaten path were told but O’Brien could never quite come to terms with what he had done. O’Brien did say; “even now I haven’t finished sorting things out’, 20 years on from the event. Storytelling may be able to bring people back through memories but it will never be able to erase

Tim O’Brien tried to be as honest and truthful as he could to be as honest and truthful, so that he could immerse the reader when they read his books. The Things They Carried tells events that O’Brien and other men in Alpha Company were there to witness, however events were understood and interpreted completely different by each individual. O’Brien needed to tell stories to recover to and cope but he could never tell them to exact detail. Kiowa's death was told differently twice. Norman Bowker's account claimed that he had woken to find Kiowa's body sunken into the muck where once lay with only small bubbles left. This story could be the truth but O'Brien told a slightly different story. O'Brien admits his fault in the truth by saying; "even that story was made up". This statement showed the reader that the events tolds were real but they were not truthful. O'Brien needed storytelling to feel better about his friends death even though it may have been