Truth In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

In The Things They Carried the author, Tim O’Brien, often shares his own war experiences, and in most, if not all of his stories, he mixes lies in with truths in order to compose them to be believable and comprehensible. Many times throughout the novel, O’Brien fails to acknowledge when he’s falsifying his stories, however, he notes that he actually adds lies in the reports on his wartime experiences, but doesn’t provide when he does so. He claims so many people don’t believe the reality of war that he truly experienced that he’s obliged to lie. Although he may be protecting the audience from the harsh reality of war, at times it’s burdensome to decipher myth from fact. He often leaves the reader wondering what actually happened, what did not

For example, when talking about the war, O’Brien states that “to generalize about war is like generalizing about peace... Almost everything is true... Almost nothing is true” (O’Brien, 81). O’Brien discusses this in “How to Tell a True War Story” while talking about the reality of war and how it feels to be in the war. The way he describes his experiences is contradictory or paradoxical because he states that nothing is true and everything is true in the same sentence. O’Brien’s point is misunderstood in analyzation by the reader, as it’s very confusing and difficult to follow when he claims completely opposite ideas at once. It almost makes the reader stop trusting the author because he doesn’t know how to keep truth separated from reality (or lies); although he acknowledges that he lies, it’s unclear to the reader when he actually does so. Finally, the author admits there is a difference between real truth and story truth, yet the distinction between the two is still

He tells the reader that “I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth” (O’Brien, 179). If the reader wasn’t confused before, they most certainly are now, as he doesn’t state what’s the difference between the two. He leaves them wondering what actually happened, or if he’s ever telling the truth. This is because he contradicts himself so many times that all his different claims and stories are jumbled into one cloud of uncertainty. The novel would be much clearer if he always told the truth, or at the very least, let the reader know when he’s telling a story truth or when he’s sharing something that actually happened. Whether O’Brien is trying to protect the reader and protect how people view his morality, or he just wants to change the stories for the sake of it, his true intentions are very