Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

“Story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth." This concept may be confusing to those who read Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried, for the first time. By using a number of different literary devices, such as juxtaposition, paradox, metaphors, and metafiction, O'Brien separates truth and fact from one and the other in his novel about his time in the Vietnam War. He shows the truth of what he was feeling through the war and after without being factual. O'Brien's explanation for not being totally factual in the book was that “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” “It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite; he wanted to heat up the truth, to make
According to O'Brien, that contrary to what it would seem, a lot of the events that passed in the book didn't actually happen. In fact, he admits that most of the content is fictitious in nature. However, there are many instances that readers may not believe that anything in the book is not real; O'Brien masterfully incorporates so much emotion and thought-provoking content within each section of the book that it almost seems like it actually happened. Even in the last few pages of the chapter "The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong", where Mary Anne, a girl who had been described as an American sweetheart, is described as having a string of tongues hanging around her neck in a room of incense and strange and almost mystical music, the surreal yet frighteningly palpable way that O'Brien presents the whole scene prevents people from outright insisting that such an episode did not occur. Other incidents that seem much more realistic, such as the story of "On the Rainy River" and the dual chapters of "The Man I Killed" and "Ambush", appear to be much more realistic, but even so, O'Brien insists that none of all that actually happened. He says that he was merely "trying to bring together the myriad of forgotten feelings and memories" by telling fabricated yet truthful stories. By using the art of meta-fiction as well as a variety of literary devices and an unforgettably haunting and haunted tone to tell his
It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment." This says a lot about why men tried not to escape enlistment and shows their values as well, as they all seemed to think that going to war and killing people would make them seem more courageous or at the very least less cowardly as they would've seemed if they didn't go to fight for their country. Though this fear of 'embarrassment' may not be the sole reason why everyone enlisted in the war, it is still a truth. There is no fact in that sentence; only truth and truth