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Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: An Analysis

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Throughout Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried, the true scene of the Vietnam war is expressed through stories of the soldiers themselves. From the very early stages of the novel, O’Brien focuses on the question: What is the point of storytelling? He explores whata the purpose of storytelling is through the effect they have on people. As the art of storytelling does its work-feelings of sorrow, joy, frustration, and love come to the surface. The point of storytelling is never pinpointed in his book. Examples of stories and the way they make people feel are used extensively throughout the novel to explore the question. O’Brien leaves the interpretation of war stories up to the audience as he exposes the different methods of storytelling and allows the tales of war to tell themselves. …show more content…

Their personal views and feelings on the stories give the closest thing to an ‘answer’ that the question might get. Mitch Sanders had a more typical, laid-back style. His method was to simply relay the information that was given to him, onto the next person. On the contrary, Rat Kiley was extremely passionate about the stories he told, acting as if they were his own personal life experiences. He’d display emotion regarding the supposed events that took place or even defensive if someone didn’t believe what he claims to be true. O’Brien placed these different characters within the book to examine all the angles of war stories. All these different story versions result in more unanswered questions such as: Is this story true? Did this character have a role in this story? Are there more stories like this? However, none of these questions are necessarily answered rather than mere thoughts left up to the reader for

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His stories are images of his own experiences in the war, as he is the narrator and main character in most of the stories. Some of his points of view are how war is an ambiguous thing and how it changes people. For instance, in “How to tell a true war story” the author reflects on the feelings of being alive after a fight, proposing that war is hell but also many other things. In O’Brien’s words “You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self- your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it.

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According to O’Brien, a true war story often can’t be told and that factual truth is often blurred by the emotional truth as told by the storyteller. With this, the line between reality and fiction is often has to be determined by the reader. Defined reality is what can be proven, while perceived reality is what is believed to have happened. In The Things they Carried, O’Brien is seen changing the truth in order to provide the reader a sense of the emotions of war, not a factual account of

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More specifically, the novel depicts the adverse effects war has on soldiers during the war and after the war. O’Brien quickly shows the crippling effects of war through himself. He has been ripped from everything he knows and placed into a foreign land, in which, his life is constantly at risk. As the story progresses there begins to be a shift from the war, to life after it. It is again immediately apparent how difficult it was for soldiers to adjust back to normal life.

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Although the soldier he killed was an enemy soldier, instead of vilifying him he was able to humanize the man. O’Brien was able to describe the physical appearance of the soldier and imagine her life before war. The author was able to portray an emotional connection and made the line between friend and enemy almost vanish. This was able to reveal the natural beauty of shared humanity even in the context of war’s horror. O’Brien is able to find the beauty in the midst of this tragic and horrible event.

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This demonstrates how the focus of the reading is to define how a true war story is not about the war. Another way O’Brien establishes the main idea of a war story not being about the war is the different narratives he uses. One

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He also wrote this book because coming home after war is no celebration because his brother Norman, after war, killed himself because he couldn't handle what he saw and did. No one could understand what happened, only his brothers who were with him at war , could understand. The viewpoint O’brien express is that during war, as a soldier, you learn to deal with things that come at you. Everything you face is war: people, weather, death. The things They Carried is a eye witness and and true story that can also be considered false.

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In The Things They Carried, Tim O’ Brien challenges the concept that war is glorious and heroic by using death to display the actuality of war. The book explores a collection of short stories written by Tim O’ Brien, who writes about the experiences within a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. Within his stories, the deaths experienced reveal the reality of war which is insignificant and cowardly. The reality of war O' Brien discusses, contrasts the romanticized beliefs of war some people may have.

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He purposely started off the book this way so that there would be a distinct connection between the people and the stories. This connection is not as vague as a run of the mill war novel that connects the people, places, and battles they fought. Instead this seems more like a peek into the minds of these soldiers, we get a sense of how they felt and what they were going through. In one chapter, O’Brien talks about stories. He states, "Stories are for joining the past to the future.

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In his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores the power of storytelling as a means of conveying the complex experiences of soldiers in the Vietnam War. Throughout the novel, O’Brien distinguishes between "Happening Truth," which refers to objective facts of events, and "Story Truth," which refers to the subjective emotional and psychological realities of those events. Through the use of these two concepts, O’Brien creates a series of interconnected stories that blur the line between fact and fiction, and ultimately serves as a testament to the enduring power of storytelling itself. The novel is comprised of a series of interconnected stories, each of which focuses on a particular aspect of the Vietnam War.

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The intricate nature of war and its significant psychological effects are also a few very interesting topics he covered in his novel. O'Brien also acknowledges that combat stories might be both factual and made up, blurring the border between fact and fiction. In order to deal with the horrors of war and to depict the reality of human experience, he examines the power of narrative itself. Showing a very interesting /moving and thought-provoking

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O'Brien emphasizes the power of storytelling to shape reality and convey the emotional truth of war. He blurs the line between fact and fiction, questioning the reliability of memory and highlighting the subjective nature of truth. Through the stories he tells, O'Brien confronts the trauma of war and attempts to make sense of the

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O'Brien catches their aggregate involvement in a progression of vignettes, blurring the lines between what is occurring reality and reality Story en route. For readers who have seen the complexities of War, O'Brien's stories reveal to them a reality. For readers who have never experienced War, stories may appear to be

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Tim O’Brien never lies. While we realise at the end of the book that Kiowa, Mitchell Sanders and Rat Kiley are all fictional characters, O’Brien is actually trying to tell us that there is a lot more truth hidden in these imagined characters than we think. This suggests that the experiences he went through were so traumatic, the only way to describe it was through the projection of fictional characters. O’Brien explores the relationship between war experiences and storytelling by blurring the lines between truth and fiction. While storytelling can change and shape a reader’s opinions and perspective, it might also be the closest in helping O’Brien cope with the complexity of war experiences, where the concepts like moral and immorality are being distorted.

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In The Things They Carried, O’Brien’s story-telling method is an attempt to show that the lines between fiction and reality are often not that far. Even though the names or details may not be fully accurate, this does not change the fact that they are a reality for many. Additionally, he challenges the importance that we place on war and links it to a storytelling aspect because he’s pointing out that not every story has a moral to it. With tragic events, we typically want some sort of meaning behind them, some sort of assurance that the incident was not for nothing. However, this is not always true, as a character “Yeah, well…I don’t see no moral”…

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He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.

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