Truth In O Brien's The Things They Carried

The majority of critics view The Things they Carried as one of the most honest depictions of the Vietnam War that has ever been written. Very few authors combine writing a vivid description of war with the pure emotion that the soldiers felt during the war as appropriately as O’Brien does. However, despite the clear depiction of war, this novel raises the question, “What is true?”. Through analyzing this novel, it is clear the author believes that the happening-truth of a story is far less important than the emotional-truth. “The Man I Killed” is one of the central chapters of the novel. However, only a few chapters later, O’Brien reveals that the events of that chapter hadn’t actually happened. Though the chapter specifically said that Tim …show more content…
After the death of Curt Lemon in the story “How to Tell a True War Story”, O’Brien claims that the sunlight reached down, grabbed Lemon, and pulled him into the tree. He states that while Lemon actually stepped on a booby-trapped mortar, the truth was that the sun reached down and pulled him into the tree. This is another example that O’Brien believes the truth isn’t always the happening-truth. Even though it didn’t happen, it was “Truer than the truth”. In analyzing these chapters, it becomes clear that O’Brien believes the perception of an event, like seeing someone pulled into a tree, is the only thing that truly matters. All of his stories follow that mold, due to the fact that in Vietnam, many of the stories became jumbled and confused. Accordingly, it became difficult for the soldiers to tell what was real, and what was fiction. The novel simulates that effect for the reader by making the happening-truth far less significant to the reader than the emotional-truth. While it is impossible for sunlight to reach down and pick somebody up, the fact that the emotions of the story were what O’Brien felt make the story real, which the reader can see not only through this example, but the writing of several of his