In “‘How to Tell a True War Story’: Metafiction in The Things They Carried,” Catherine Calloway discusses the interpretations of the genre and reality versus fiction in Tim O’Brien’s memoire. In her analysis, Calloway introduces the term metafiction to explain the genre of the book. While it is a war memoire, The Things They Carried makes the reader question the real and fictional parts of the author’s narrative. Metafiction is a genre that explores the possible functionality of the memoire, in turn drawing attention to the war and how it affects soldiers in new ways. Calloway also discusses how the memoire forces the reader to consider whether fact versus fiction is even important in this case since the book reveals truths about war in general.
