In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses stories from soldiers he fought with to give firsthand accounts of the Vietnam War. Throughout the novel he is able to give a description of each of these soldiers and their personal stories before and after the war. By doing so, the reader is able to get a better understanding of what it was like fighting in the Vietnam War and why the soldiers acted the way they did throughout the novel. His descriptions of the untimely deaths of these soldiers mentioned in the novel are horrifying. With the use of imagery, diction and repetition O’Brien is able to narrate the burden the war placed on him and his fellow soldier buddies.
Before he was drafted to the war, Obrien didn’t know what he was