Chapter Analysis: The Things They Carried 'By Tim O' Brien

Written task 2 Tim O'Brien The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is quite a different novel from most and stands out from the variety of other books concerning the Vietnam war. Unlike most books which are classified as fiction or nonfiction The Things They Carried is surreal and fits neither category. O'Brien uses the Vietnam war as his baseline for his story The Things They Carried but he exaggerates and throws bits and pieces of fiction in there to make the story more enticing. It makes you wonder did what I just read really happen? Fitting into no category but rather a book written by a soldier to show the horrors and work that occurred made O'Brien simply want to share his experience with the world, and as such deviating from a generic
It is the book that doesn't fit into any category. A fiction book is all made up but the war happened and things that we read about did happen so it can’t be pure fiction. It reads most like a memoir of all things. The majority of the book is between him, his unit which acts like family and their stories about Vietnam. A memoir is a factual story but The Things They Carried, while not a factual story is based mostly on facts and it does read like a short novel. All the “chapters” read like their own individual short story but they link to each other allowing it to still be read like a novel or many small reports. The question is why would O'Brien choose to write the novel the way he
In the chapter “On The Rainy River” O'Brien receives news that he is being drafted and can't handle it so he attempts to flee to Canada to dodge the draft. He says “Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you’re leaving behind”(54 O'Brien). He felt sorrow before the war for attempting to leave everything so he wouldn’t have to go through something he didn’t support. This relates tremendously to war and probably how he felt after it. In war people do things that they aren’t proud off, and those things are often left better unsaid. O'Brien aims not to fantasize war like a lot of other novels do but rather show how war really is. He just can’t be one hundred percent truthful because he is ashamed of what he did and some things are left better unsaid. This is because in war the rules you were raised with are thrown out the window. You have a mission and that has to be your driving force and you will achieve it any way necessary. The rules of literary genres are thrown out because an autobiography would be too real for a person not to judge with and a fiction book gets rid of the purpose O'Brien has for writing The Things They Carried and defeats the purpose of writing it. The book is altered by allowing us to grasp the concept and hear stories while he doesn't have to