How Does Tim O Brien Use Storytelling In The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien uses storytelling and memories to bring characters and events back to life in order to tell their story. O’Brien wants the readers to understand that even though people die and an event is no longer occurring, the event or person is not gone entirely. The Things They Carried is a book written by a man named Tim O’Brien. He is considered, “The best American writer of his generation,” by the San Fransisco Examiner. O’Brien has won the National Book Award for Fiction, the James Fenimore Cooper Price and the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US and Canada. It is said that, “The Things They Carried is a classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds… It is a ground breaking meditation on war memory,

In chapter 15, Speaking of Courage, the soldier returns home after the war to find that his hometown has moved on and he learns that his ex-girlfriend, Sally, is married. Norman had felt like there was no place to go after he returned from the Vietnam war and that a part of him had changed. The text states, "'The thing is,' he wrote, 'there's no place to go. Not just in this lousy town. In general. My life, I mean. It's almost like I got killed over in Nam.. Hard to describe. That night when Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down into the sewage with him.. Feels like I'm still in deep shit'" (150). Also, Bowker would drive in his father's big Chevy and around a lake for hours. He wanted to explain the war to someone, but he thought that no one would understand. He decided to write a letter to Tim O’Brien asking him if Tim could write a story about his life after the war and how it caused him to feel like a part of him is gone. The letter had haunted O’Brien for months, but he finally sat down one morning and began writing. Several months later, he had felt like he had used storytelling to explain the life of Norman Bowker and decided to send him a copy. Bowker had responded back stating that Tim had left out parts of Vietnam that should’ve been discussed. Eight months later, Bowker hanged himself at the YMCA. This had made Tim O’Brien realize how important storytelling is

Technically this isn’t 100% true. People believe that a war is finished whenever the pain caused by it is gone. During war, soldiers deal with traumatic events that cause PTSD. PTSD means Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it is a disorder that is developed whenever a person experiences something traumatic in their life. After the soldiers return home, they have to fight a war between their consciousness and the disorder. In addition, they have to deal with the guilt and death of others. A poem that can relate to this is called, Hurt, by Nine Inch Nails. In the poem, the character has to deal with the pain and memories of others. The poem states, “Try to kill it all away but I remember everything” (Nine Inch Nails 1). Similarly, the ‘Here In The States, I Don’t Even Know How To Talk To People,’ is a interview between a man named Captain Drew Pham and his wife, Molly Pearl. They discuss with a host about Drew’s involvement with the war. Drew states in the interview, “‘I don’t think that this is ever really going to be over for any of us’” (Pham 6). During the conversation, Pham includes that he did a lot of bad things during his tour in Afghanistan in October such as killing a 60 or 70-year-old schoolteacher on accident. It can be inferred that he would live with guilt for the rest of his life and that he would never forgive