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The Things They Carried: An Analysis

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The Things They Carried Second hand sources is the only way adolescents of this age are able to uncover the stories about what happened in Vietnam in 1955. The Things They Carried consists of Tim O’Brien’s recollection of the Vietnam War. The book explains the importance of keeping these memories alive, even if it’s not the exact truth. Characters are shown as they were during the war and the materials and memories they carried everywhere with them. O’Brien expresses the men’s feelings towards their significant others back home and how it affects them while stationed far away from their safe place. Also, he reveals differences in truths and fiction within a story. Making sure people know and remember his team the way he did was one of O’Brien’s purposes of writing this book. He did not want what happened to them to be forgotten or ignored. The author’s claim as it pertains to the Vietnam War is that memories can be a good and a bad thing, they don’t necessarily have to be the whole truth, and remembrance is an important key to keeping legacies going. Reminiscence is relevant throughout the men's lives in the book while they are at war. They can be both good and bad depending on the story told. In the …show more content…

Frequently, happening truth is placed in the book to show the events the men went through in the war and what really was going on. On the other hand, story truth is adjusting what really happened to what's more believable and what feels right. O’Brien claims that as long as the story is told, it is not relevant if it's true. He believes that something isn't true unless it feels true, so when telling the reader his truth, he said ”I want you to feel what I felt”( O’Brien 171), so with the stories O’Brien tells, he changes the truth to make it feel right. According to O’Brien, something can be true, even if it never really happened in the war. O’Brien goes on

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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

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