The Things They Carried Literary Analysis Essay

The Things They Carried

Soldiers carry many things in their life, physical objects as well as mentally. Mental items can include the burden of war and of course the stories from their experiences that will forever be with them. But in Tim O'Brien (a vietnam war veterans) novel The Things They Carried he has a different perspective on stories and the truth behind them, having been in the violent and traumatic Vietnam War. According to O'brien, a true war story can be recognized by its lack of moral and depressing nature, in his view, on war story is a happy uplifting one and if it does you are being fooled. Most importantly O'Brien had a message that it doesn't matter if a story is truly for a fact true and occured, what makes a story true is the …show more content…
He has an entire chapter dedicated to the truth of war stories, in which he provides a lengthy list of things that make a real war story; “ a true war story is never moral. It does not instruct nor encourage virtue nor suggest models of proper human behavior nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done.”(pg 64) O'Brian states his opinion that a true war stories job is not to influence but to inform and create awareness and along with that emotion, sadness and anger and negative bittersweet emotions that a human can always understand.In another portion of his novel he goes on to tell an elaborate story of “The sweetheart of song tra bong”. It was a story that could never really happen, a soldier flew his girlfriend too him and she became fascinated with vietnam and turned into a complex naturist, running away from her life to be one with nam. As O'Brian recalled the telling of the story he said “Facts were formed by sensation”(pg 85) which is too say that anything you feel to be true and make in your head to be true can become hard set facts in your mind due to such strong emotions, even if what those “facts” are are not possibly true, only the emotions that gave you the

Show More

The Things They Carried Literary Analysis Essay