The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien - 1819 Words

Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, is a novel that is seemingly separated yet completely connected throughout. As explained in an interview with Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried â€Å"is part novel, part collection of stories, part essays, part journalism; it is, more significantly, all at the same time† (Naparsteck 1). Although seemingly complex, this novel is built so expertly that it is quite easy to understand. Every chapter seems to offer a new variable or outlook on the war in Vietnam seen through the eyes of one soldier, Tim O’Brien, and experiences with soldiers he was close to. Every chapter offers a new look into different relationships: past and present, which offers insight into the mind of one soldier and his†¦show more content†¦Tim O’Brien outlines throughout the course of the novel a picture of what a true war story is and the characteristics thereof. First, it must be understood what O’Brien con siders a true war story to be before it can be deduced how this coincides with interactions with soldiers in the Vietnam War and other wars as well. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien points out that â€Å"in any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen† (67). There is a stricken difference between the story-truth and happening-truth in war stories. The happening-truth is usually what is left out in a true war story, as the happening-truth is usually extremely hard to hear or unrelated to the correlated emotions to the story. Conversely, there is the story-truth, which soldiers use to help the reader or listener â€Å"feel what [they] felt† (O’Brien 171). Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried â€Å"[addresses] the divergence of values – the contradiction between a standard of literary authenticity and the project of moral evaluation† (Wesley 2). This gives a more in depth representation as to what a true war story is and what the novel represents. This journal on The Things They Carried also points out that â€Å"by abandoning literary realism, [the novel] comes closer to presenting a polemic vision that insists on the problematic nature of the