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Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: Novel Analysis

1469 Words6 Pages

In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, he uses metafiction by writing about how he made up most of the stories. The stories of his experiences from the Vietnam war in his book, create a war-like perspective for his readers to better understand war because often, battles can be spotty in the mind and the imagination fills the gaps. O’Brien uses his book to help the reader find truth.
Many things in The Things They Carried are confusing and contracting. But there are a few things the O’Brien validates for the reader. He did fight in the Vietnam War. Several different places in the book show this. He received his draft letter on June 17, 1968. He responded in not the normal way, but he ran away to the Canadian border where he spent six …show more content…

In his book, O’Brien has three separate experience with the deaths of the enemy. Two instances involved military personal but one, a civilian in Vietnam. Within in four days of fighting in Vietnam, O’Brien sees his first dead body. But death does not shock him, but the disrespect the other men show towards the dead man. They “shook the old man’s hand… one by one the other did it too. They didn’t disturb the body, they just grabbed the old man’s hand and offered a few words and moved away” (O’Brien 214). In the end, O’Brien admitted to being afraid to do the same as the other men. It “like a funeral without the sadness,” holds a disrespect for the dead (O’Brien 215). Later in the chapter, O’Brien admits that during the war, he had many encounters with death, both by allies and enemies. He had to “climbed a tree and threw down what was left of Curt Lemon… watched Kiowa sink into the muck… policed up the enemy KIAs” (O’Brien 229). These experiences could possibly have happened. But in a commentary of The Things They Carried, Don Ringnalda writes, “all of it is made up, and all of it is absolutely true” (______ 84-85). This carries the idea that “Rather than real-life events inspires stories, he surmises that stories invent reality” (________ 278). Yes, the general idea for the deaths are true, but the details are what the mind creates in the lack of knowledge of the

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In the book The Things They Carried, the author, Tim O’Brien, uses many literary methods, including metafiction. Metafiction is while an author is writing a story, he or she breaks the fourth wall in order to make the audience feel like they are involved. It brings reality to a fictional story by speaking to the audience about what is going on, and it makes the audience forget that what they are experiencing isn’t real. Metafiction blurs the line between fiction and reality. Tim O’Brien uses many literary devices in this book, including symbolism, imagery, setting, a narrator point of view, metafiction, and a tone.

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Tim O’ Brien’s book ‘The Things They Carried’ is a series of stories about the Vietnam War. Although all chapters in this book are related to the Vietnam War, each story transmits a different message to the readers and is narrated in different ways. In this essay, I have analyzed two stories to find the themes of each one and through what they are expressed. In “How to tell a true war story”, the author narrates two stories of the men in the Alpha Company and throughout the stories he disputes whether they are real or fabricated. On the other hand, in “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, Rat Kiley tells the story of his first assignment in the isolated mountains of Chu Lai.

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Death was inevitable in war, and in this war, nearly 2 million people died. In the chapter “The Lives of the Dead” it talks about how Dave Jensen was using his dark humor and poking fun at a dead old man whose arm was blown off. Kiowa, instead wouldn’t join in on the joke because of his strong faith and his morals towards respecting elders. O’Brien also reflects back on when he first experienced the mourning of death. O’Brien’s way of mourning now is the complete opposite of how he did in the past, due to the

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Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

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Even after all these years, O’Brien is still unable to get the images of Vietnam out of him head, specifically of the man he killed. In the novel, he repeats the description of the man numerous times, almost to the point of excess, saying,“he was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole” (124).

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Tim O'Brien, an extremely talented and acclaimed writer of the award winning novel, The Things They Carried, has an extraordinary writing style, which seems to cloud the line between fact and fiction. He challenges his readers to consider more profound interpretations about truth and memory, and guides the readers closer to the center of the character’s experiences. The Things They Carried is not just a story about fighting in a war, but also about fighting the war going on inside one’s self. The book's dominant idea is just as pertinent today as it was many years ago; touching the hearts of all types of people from all different walks of life.

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There are numerous examples of metafiction in The Things They Carried; many are clear, and some are harder to notice at first glance. In the text, author Tim O’Brien uses a metafictional writing style to vividly illustrate what emotions and thoughts went through the minds of the soldiers fighting in Vietnam, including himself. It is unclear whether or not some of the stories he tells in the text actually happened, but there is no doubt that they are paramount to the underlying objective of O’Brien’s writing style: to use realistic scenarios that may not have actually happened, to make whatever changes necessary to the story to get his point across. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction to obscure the line between truth and fiction by manipulating details that trigger certain emotions to influence the reader. Metafiction allows writers like Tim O’Brien to manipulate what is held to be truth, and fabricate certain details in an attempt to enhance or reinforce the meaning of a story.

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