Things They Carried Literary Analysis

144 Words1 Pages
The Things They Carried is a book that turns on a single realization: as part of imagining a return to Vietnam as home to engender a new way of reading and writing the world, distinctions disappear and the impossibility of separating experiences and stories, reality and the imaginary, into orderly categories transcends the desire for neatness and clarity. O’Brien’s postVietnam world is a confusing, ambiguous place. No hard and fast rules exist; truth is always provisional, waiting to adapt itself to the next story, the next reality. The Things Them Carried testifies to displacement as a complicated condition; the polyvalent and equivocal nature of its vision and its orientation transforms everything in its scope. As such, the careful detailing