Truth In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

I do not believe that O’Brien believes there is truth in war. There are many examples from both stories that show O’Brien does not believe there is truth in war. I think the throughout “The Things They Carried” the soldiers are lying to themselves, they carry everything to make themselves feel safer even though they things they carry will often not help them survive. The author gives the reason for why they carried the things they did. In one instance of describing everything they carried and the weight of it the author says, “But they carried it anyway, partly for safety, partly for the illusion of safety.” The soldiers themselves know that all of the things they carry will not help them in war, but they still carry them to make themselves

I think in this story he shows how war alters the soldier’s perceptions of right and wrong, just like telling a war story you do not know if it is truthful or not. I think a good example of soldiers not knowing what was right and wrong was when Rat Kiley was torturing the water buffalo. The torturing of the water buffalo may feel wrong to the reader, but we do not know if it is truly wrong. This story is hard for me as the reader to believe because at the beginning of nearly every section the author says, “This is true” or “It’s all exactly true” or some other variation to prove the stories truthfulness. If a person is always trying to convince you that is something is true I have a hard time believing it actually is. I do not believe O’Brien believes in truth in war because the soldiers cannot explain the experiences of fighting a war. He says in the last paragraph, “And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war…. It’s love and memory. It’s about sorrow.” Soldiers do not know what actually happened, rather what their minds are telling them happened. This is shown on page 1154 when the soldiers have been sitting quietly for so long they begin to hear things. They report the entire enemy army is upon them and order up the firepower. Their minds made up the sounds just as their minds may make up how other things in war

On page 1147 the author says, “They (the soldiers) were actors and the war came at them in 3-D. When someone died, it wasn’t quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted.” This shows that natural law is not occurring. The soldiers were doing as they were told and it was as if the war was a “man-made law”. Fragmentation is another post-modernism trait which is a big part of this story. The narrative switches between Jimmy Cross thinking about Martha and him describing what the soldiers were carrying. These two narratives did not really coincide other than he carried letters with him from Martha along with his war gear. There are small instances of dark humor, another post-modernism trait, in “The Things They Carried” as well. I thought that it was humorous that one of the soldiers checked the dead boys pulse although you could clearly see he was dead on page 1144. Another instance of dark humor is when they soldiers are waiting for Ted’s body to be picked up after his death. On page 1148, Mitchell Sanders says, “The moral’s pretty obvious… Stay away from drugs. No joke, they’ll ruin your day every time.” I thought this was a dark thing to say after one of their comrades had just