Truth In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories, tells the story of soldiers in Alpha Company, who were fighting in the Vietnam War. Moreover, these stories depict the soldiers’ experience in the war zone, as well as their lives after returning home from war. Woven throughout these stories, however, is the notion that the narrator may be exaggerating or even telling a fabricated story, in lieu of what really happened. As O’Brien describes, in a war story, “almost everything is true” and, at the same time “almost nothing is true” (77). Ultimately, Tim O’Brien tries to confuse and obscure the notion of truth in his stories in order to emphasize the true chaotic nature of war and the emotional impact of combat on those who

This intentional alteration can be seen clearly in “The Man I Killed”, where O’Brien describes the background of the young Vietnamese soldier that he killed with a grenade. O’Brien informs the reader that the boy “was not a fighter... he wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics... he could not picture himself doing the brave things his father had done” (119). Obviously, there is no way for O’Brien to know this about the boy, but O’Brien creates a background for the boy similar to his own. In doing so, O’Brien forces the reader to reconsider the conventional American notion of war as good versus evil, and instead recognize the fact that war, no matter how noble the cause, claims innocent lives on both

The quality of his storytelling is notable in the stories “Speaking of Courage” and “Notes”. In the former story, Norman Bowker, a member of Alpha Company, describes life in his hometown after the war. Specifically, Bowker details how he “almost won the Silver Star” (135) for saving his comrade from drowning in a field of mud. As Bowker describes, however, overwhelmed by the smell of the field, he froze up and “in that way had lost the Silver Star” (147). In “Notes”, O’Brien continues to tell of Bowker’s unfortunate life after returning home from Vietnam, this time from his perspective. According to O’Brien, Bowker “spent his mornings in bed... at night he drove around town in his father’s car, mostly alone, or with a six-pack of beer” (149-150). Bowker could not find anything that fulfilled him like the war had. Additionally, he continued to feel guilty for letting Kiowa drown. These constant feelings of unfulfillment and guilt, much like what O’Brien struggled with, eventually led to Bowker hanging himself. This description of a veteran consistently struggling under the guilt of letting his friend die a horrible death is certainly quite powerful for the reader to observe, as it demonstrates the profound impact war can have on the human psyche, and this struggle is prevalent among many veterans in our society