The Things They Carried by Tim OBrien makes the reader feel like theyre there while its happening; it makes you feel like you know what war is

The unconventional structure of the individual stories and the stories as a whole reinforces the book’s ambiguity. Calloway-web. This ambiguity stresses another theme of the novel, the ambiguity of war. The reader’s mind is forced to struggle to wrap its mind around the messages in the book. They must go past the surface and past the entertaining stories to see what lies deeper within the texts. Just like war, O’Brien makes his novel ambiguous. This brings the reader closer to what really happens in war and the psychological struggles that soldiers must overcome. “It was a sad thing to watch.  Definitely no the old Rat Kiley. His whole personality seemed out of kilter.” O’Brien 210. This quote explains what happens when you’re constantly on your toes and the emotional tolls that war takes. Using personal stories that aren’t true or a lie, but somewhere in-between draws the reader to feel the chaos of war.

        O’Brien has a unique way of getting his point across. The Things They Carried portrays the theme that war is unconventional and has unconventional happenings through his unconventional style of writing. In chapters like Spin and Lives Of The Dead O’Brien starts with a “(S)tatement that the rest of the chapter throws into question. "The War wasn't all terror and violence," the narrator tells us, "Sometimes things could almost get sweet". What follows, however, is a series of vignettes that are anything but "sweet."”  Blyn-web. This style of writing shows the contradictions of war and how unconventional it is for people to be killing each other over a war that many don’t think was worth fighting. The way that O’Brien combines unconventional and chaotic styles in his writing brings the reader deeper into the story, and makes them experience the stories and therefore the war.

        O’Brien uses his unconventional style of writing to invite the reader to fully experience the war and express the recurring themes of war in his novel The Things They Carried. Like O’Brien says “Vietnam was full of strange stories, some improbable, some well beyond that, but the stories that will last forever are those that swirl back and forth across the border between trivia and bedlam, the mad and the mundane.” O’Brien 85. These are the stories that people really connect with. O’Brien blends the line between reality and fiction, allowing people to really get deep into the story and connect with the characters and to experience the war.

Works Cited

Blyn, Robin. “O’Brien’s THE THINGS THEY CARRIED.” Explicator 61.3

(2003): 189. Academic Search Premier. Web. 30 May 2012

Calloway, Catherine. “ ‘How To Tell A True War Story’: Metafiction In The Things They Carried.” Critique 36.4 (1995): 249. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 May 2012.

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1990. Print.