Truth in The Things They Carried Essay

The Things They Carried, a novel written by Tim OBrien, raises the question of the extent of truthfulness of stories that are told from experience in which the novel is solely based on the accounts of war-veterans and their lives in Vietnam. The soldiers fighting in the war describe certain stories that have affected them the most and from that readers can interpret that the armed forces are able to capture the attention of their listeners through providing immense detail of the conditions, adding false information in order to increase suspense, and to evoke emotions with listeners to create parallel feelings with the story at hand. Through OBriens techniques of writing these war accounts he blurs between actual truth and fiction. As a result, it is impossible to know if his events in the story are based on real war situations or if it is made up. OBrien is not trying to capture the war but what the soldiers who fought in that event in history were feeling as they had to endure dangerous conditions. He sets out to prove that emotional truth surpasses factual truth and this is shown through his tactics of storytelling.

The immense detail provided of the conditions of the war zone gives the listeners a feeling that they are actually there experiencing the gunshots, the death of close friends, and the pain of killing another human being. OBrien describes his experience of killing a Vietnamese solider and describes him as a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole (OBrien. 130). By emphasizing the death of this man consistently throughout the chapter, it pin point the agony he felt once he killed basically a man who was not fit for war. Through the constant descriptions of the dead body, it shows the emotional truth behind the feeling of killing a human being and from that readers can understand the anguish of taking the life of another person. These soldiers also had to endure killing people because they were embarrassed not to and the men had to sacrifice themselves so they died so as not to die of embarrassment (21). In The Things They Carried chapter, OBrien goes in to great detail to tell every little thing each soldier carried and a major thing they carried was the feeling of honor and to die a man. This led the armed forces to die in battle because they would prove that they are real men. From all of the detail OBrien writes, it answers the question of storytelling due to the fact that the detail make the point that he may be over exaggerating in order to achieve his purpose of convincing readers of emotion rather than warfare.

OBrien adds situations to his stories that may lead to a fake story and throughout the novel he admits to his stories having false information and they could possibly be made up therefore he relates back to his purpose of the novel which is to demonstrate the difficulties and emotions of the soldiers. In Notes he explains that by telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain (158). From this, OBriens argument is that in storytelling, objective truth is not as important as the feeling that a story gives. This proves that in telling stories to people, the actual information is not as vital as the emotional appeal it provides to people. He also claims that the thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head because what a person sees in their mind during a story with create personal emotions for someone. That is what telling a heart-wrenching story is all about, evoking emotions in a person to get the to understand the pain that a soldier felt in combat. Storytelling may have the fake events and the false information, but in the end the significant part is how a person came away from that story and if it had impact on their like in a good or bad way.

Emotion is key to the story and OBrien truly can bring the sadness out of people through the depressing conditions he writes about. OBrien ends the novel with a story about his first love, Linda and he describes a dream he has of Linda in which he says Linda smiled. It was a secret smile, as if she knew things nobody could ever know, and she reached out and touched my wrists and said, Timmy, stop crying. It doesnt matter (238). Knowing that a deceased nine year old tells Timmy that her death doesnt matter is disheartening to listeners because a little girl tells a little boy her life doesnt matter. Listeners of this story can see that life is full of emotional ups and downs and that the feelings you have are more significant than knowing the truth. Young Timmy has already experienced a tragic loss early in his life therefore OBrien tried to satisfy that empty hole with the stories he tells of a young girl he loved. He realize[d] it is as Tim trying to save Timmys life with a story because he describes Linda as a beautiful young girl who he loved deeply and the lets him remember the good times he had with her when he was a young boy therefore he tells himself a happy story. Through the novel sad and happy stories are told and from those it creates certain feelings for a person and that can either impact you positively or negatively.

OBriens main purpose of his novel is to prove that emotional truth is more important that just knowing the facts of the story because understanding how person felt means more than just knowing the conditions. The soldiers in Vietnam went through difficulties a person will never know and from a real life experience; OBrien sets out to demonstrate the true feelings of a soldier in war and struggles they went through. This is achieved through has tactics he uses in his stories and it does create emotion within a person.