When Reading The Things They Carried, my teacher told us that it was historical fiction, and that only some parts of the book were true. I started reading this and thought it was a good book. Much of the war stories such as “Sweet Heart of the song Tra Bong” and “The Man I Killed” were both of my favorite war chapters. We watched a video of Tim O’Brien talking about his book; he read out loud the chapter “Ambush” and told us that most of the words and people in that chapter were not real. He did not have a daughter named Kathleen and he didn’t kill the man with a hand grenade. This part bothered me while listening to Tim O’Brien speak what seemed to be true stories I realized that not everything in the book was real.
While he was talking about the book not being real, he went on to say that he did not lie about what happened but merely didn’t tell the whole truth or leave some parts out. He said, “If I said I was going to the store to buy cereal and I left that would be the truth but if I said I was going to the store to buy cereal robed the place and left that would be the truth also I just left out the part about me robbing it.” When he said this it made me think, if he was saying that you aren’t lying when you’re telling the half-truth. What have people been saying in society? What aren’t they telling us or only telling half of us. Did man really land on the moon? What about all the other war storybooks that are out there are they all true about the war?
I felt like this was an eye opener when he says “This is True” (Pg 67) he told the reader how to tell a true war story from a fake one he says, “A true war story is never moral, it doesn’t instruct, nor encourage virtue, no suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done.”(Pg68) War stories are going to end and not make sense. The Men in these wars will do crazy things because of it, it affects them emotionally.
Tim O’ Brien is trying to make a point in this book. It doesn’t matter whether it is fiction or not his point in the book is to tell the reader emotionally what they carried. Such as grief, loss, loved ones…etc. Some of the stories are to prove a point that war isn’t just the physical aspect but also the emotional and mental parts that are tough. In the chapter “The Man I Killed”(Pg124) He tells us, “his father and two uncles and many neighbors had joined in the struggle for independence. He was not a communist. He was a citizen and a solider.”(Pg125) Tim O’Brien didn’t really know the solider he killed, all of those details he says in those parts aren’t real. The reason he put those deails in the story were to tell the reader that war isn’t all about killing people or “The enemy” It shows you that war brainwashed you to think that “The enemy” is nothing more then an object, not a person, but a target.
