Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien constructs a meticulous narrative in order to portray a true representation of war through his writing. It is well known however that truth always becomes a casualty through war resulting in a challenging approach for O’Brien. Although deemed a work of fiction, many of the stories within The Things They Carried reflect an almost autobiographical outlook through the characters combined with metafiction. O’Brien does well to create a distinction between the truth of the narrative and that of the truth of the events taking place. Therefore it is this conciliation of truth that he uses to recreate his discourse of Vietnam using fictional form combined with a clear exhibition of facts and figures such as in “The Things They Carried” (O’Brien, 3-21). Nevertheless O’Brien still faces an infinite obstacle in regards to trauma. Herman states that ‘The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.’ (Herman, 2) In effect the survivors of such ordeals retell their stories in a heavily distorted account due to emotional stress often controverting
When considering trauma, exile, and displacement the stories invest a purposeful reaction and direction despite knowing fully well there could never be a final comfort from doing so. Instead, the stories demonstrate dual functions through redeeming the experience of such things like exile using metonymic substitutions like Vietnam as a new found home. Instead The Things They Carried pivots on the realisation of return, the potential of differencing story with experience and the real with the imaginary. This can also be applied to metaphoric relations to bodies who have been given names and O’Brien’s own moral