Truth In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (83). The theme of “happening-truth” versus “story-truth” is a constant opposition Tim O’Brien uses to convey his “true war story” to his audience. Many times in the book The Things They Carried, O’Brien lies to the reader to attempt to give the reader realistic events, so they can relate to the emotions O’Brien felt during the Vietnam war. O’Brien makes it clear in the chapter “Field Trip” that a person who has not been to war cannot comprehend what it was like. He uses a fictional character, Kathleen, to be a stand in for the reader; she is innocent and free from the burden of serving in wartime. To overcome the unrelatable aspects of war, O’Brien

Contrary, Kiowa does not like the idea of invading the pagoda, saying, “this is all wrong” (122). Kiowa symbolizes the opposition to the war, those who think involvement with Vietnam is not a good idea. Third, the “field” Kiowa dies in represent Vietnam as well; the “field” is unpleasant and hard to get out of, like the war. Norman Bowker has a parallel of the field with a lake. Even at back at home, the lake is there reminding him of the war as if it will never leave him, showing the reader the war stays with people. In addition, Bowker is seen talking to a drive through worker in military language, which the drive through worker understands, showing that only ones in the war can understand. The others, who did not go to war, do not even bother to listen to his stories. However, all these stories are fictional. None of them happened, yet the reader can understand better with the made up details. The reader, while not getting an accurate representation of the events, gets a better, deeper understanding of the emotions and deeper aspects of the Vietnam War: the real

On the outside, the word “fiction” stands out the most on the front cover because it is the biggest. I chose to put fiction as the main focus on the outside because the cover is only a tiny aspect of the whole piece; it’s surface deep. Around the word “fiction”, I added the “happening” events from the book that were not real but served a different purpose such as symbolism. This would show that all these events are fictional, but since they are on the front cover, the meaning behind those events is only surface level. On the spine, I wrote chose to add the title of the arguably most important chapter: “How to Tell a True War Story.” The title of the book is virtually always on the spine. The title represents the whole book, the purpose. Tim O’Brien tells the reader how to tell a war story by giving them an example of how to tell one, so I added it to show the importance of the idea of how to tell a war story and also to show that my quotation represents a major aspect in how to tell a war story. On the back of the book, I glued newspapers that told the events of the Vietnam War. Again, this shows the newspapers are only surface level as they are on the back cover. The newspapers only show the events of the war, but do not dive deep into the emotion behind it all. In the middle of the back cover, I placed my quote. Sometimes, in books, the summary is placed on the back; since my quote represents the artwork as a whole,