Tim O'Brien The Things They Carried and How To Tell A True War Story

It's hard to write a reaction to these pieces. Obviously they were powerful and moving, but there's something more there. It's hard to describe what made me want to keep reading The Things They Carried. After all, most of the story is a list of common things that soldiers carried with them. The things that make it compelling are the things that O'Brien mixes in with the lists. He adds in all of the men's personal issues, the emotional weights that they carry. The lieutenant's love of Martha in between the lists also made me not be bored by reading this list that might otherwise be monotonous. O'Brien takes the bare facts of war and adds a very personal touch to it. In both of the chapters he tells and retells the stories adding more information each time, and each time starting at a different time, from a different perspective. This kind of writing can teach us a lot more about a war than a textbook chapter on Vietnam or a documentary showing footage. O’Brien is not embarrassed to admit that he was affected by the war. One of the most moving parts for me was when he talked about the memories that wake him up at night. He says that if a war story matters it doesn’t matter if it actually happened. This was interesting to me. Earlier he said that if a war story left you with a moral or some hope it probably wasn’t true. Now he says that it doesn’t matter if a story is really true or not.

I think both of these chapters will help me think about the things that I carry through life.