Tim O Brien's Epigraph Essay

In November of 1955, the United States of America entered the Vietnam War. What would follow for the next two decades was a gruesome, unchecked state of warfare, that would leave even the most resilient soldiers broken down and demented. Units were, for the most part, unchecked by any higher power, and were left to commit atrocities at their own discretion. Tim O’Brien was one of these drafted soldiers in the war, and he writes about his experiences in The Things They Carried, a work of fiction which heavily incorporates verisimilitude as both a theme of the novel and in the writing of the book itself. He talks of an environment where isolation in the new, strange environment of Vietnam lead to a detachment from reality, and incorporates this by admitting that some of his stories are fiction, but leaving the reader questioning which elements are true. The ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus once said, “In war, truth is the first casualty”. This idea still remains true in the common era and is ever present throughout the novel. This quote serves as a relevant epigraph for The Things They Carried, as it incorporates the blurring of reality and fiction that O’Brien emphasizes as a key component of a ‘true war story’.
A unique feature in O’Brien’s writing style is that he breaks off from his stories to tell the reader how he writes them, and to tell them that …show more content…
In this respect, O’Brien’s words show that the truth doesn’t come of war because it can’t convey the emotions correctly. The story is left a muddled line between factual and emotional reality which strains to give the most accurate picture of what was really experienced by those present in the war. This begs the question, is actual truth cold, hard facts, which can’t convey feelings, or real emotions which don’t line up with