Author and Vietnam War veteran, Tim O’Brien, in his fictional novel “The Things They Carried” ties together his real experience from being in the Vietnam War with a fictional twist on all his stories throughout the novel. The stories complexity allows O’Brien to emphasizes the difference between “storytelling truth” versus “happening truth”. O’Brien uses rhetoric devices such as repetition and metaphors and diction to highlight the effect storytelling has on a reader’s emotions such as grief. O’Brien also emphasizes the fact that stories allow for the diseased to keep living through their own chronicle memories, which gives his novel a purpose: to aid readers through their own grief by sharing the stories of these Vietnam war soldiers. In
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Although the reader assumes these stories to be just for fun, in the end O’Brien makes the connection of time changing and how telling stories help deal with grief. O’Brien uses obscenities and rhetorical question to inform the reader on who is telling the story and in what time frame, whether it is 43 year-old O’Brien writing this novel, O’Brien during the vietnam war or another man in the platoon. In the chapter “The Things They Carried”, O'Brien uses a series of rhetorical questions and obscenities to allow the reader that the story is coming from O’Brien during the wars for these were the questions going through his mind in that moment, “...-ass and elbows- a swallowed up feeling- and how you found yourself worrying about odd things: will your flashlight go dead? Do rats carry rabies? If you screamed, how far would the sound carry? Would your buddies hear it…”(Pg 10). These chapters are meant to extend O'Brien's theme of wanting to honor the diseased or forgotten as well as emphasize the importance of storytelling. The importance of change in time and point of view, and remembering the fallen are emphasized and tied together in the last chapter “The Lives of the Dead”. O’Brien switches back and forth from telling a war story of the first dead guy he knew in war and how he learned how the men he was working with coped with grief to talking about a young girl named Linda with a brain tumor who passed away when she was young. O’Brien is able to show the change in time and point of view by referring to himself as both “Timmy” and “Tim.” Even though many years have passed, O’Brien still recalls a date they went on in fourth grade, “And so in the spring of 1956, when we were in fourth grade, I took her on the first real date of my life-”(216). O’Brien uses repetition to connect the
Although the reader assumes these stories to be just for fun, in the end O’Brien makes the connection of time changing and how telling stories help deal with grief. O’Brien uses obscenities and rhetorical question to inform the reader on who is telling the story and in what time frame, whether it is 43 year-old O’Brien writing this novel, O’Brien during the vietnam war or another man in the platoon. In the chapter “The Things They Carried”, O'Brien uses a series of rhetorical questions and obscenities to allow the reader that the story is coming from O’Brien during the wars for these were the questions going through his mind in that moment, “...-ass and elbows- a swallowed up feeling- and how you found yourself worrying about odd things: will your flashlight go dead? Do rats carry rabies? If you screamed, how far would the sound carry? Would your buddies hear it…”(Pg 10). These chapters are meant to extend O'Brien's theme of wanting to honor the diseased or forgotten as well as emphasize the importance of storytelling. The importance of change in time and point of view, and remembering the fallen are emphasized and tied together in the last chapter “The Lives of the Dead”. O’Brien switches back and forth from telling a war story of the first dead guy he knew in war and how he learned how the men he was working with coped with grief to talking about a young girl named Linda with a brain tumor who passed away when she was young. O’Brien is able to show the change in time and point of view by referring to himself as both “Timmy” and “Tim.” Even though many years have passed, O’Brien still recalls a date they went on in fourth grade, “And so in the spring of 1956, when we were in fourth grade, I took her on the first real date of my life-”(216). O’Brien uses repetition to connect the