Truth In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

If a captivating story is told but its validity is questioned, will it be held to prove its legitimacy? In the case of Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, the answer is yes. O’Brien’s story is based on his experiences as a soldier and the stories he was told. Towards the beginning of the piece, O’Brien provides his own circumstances of what a war story must encompass to be ‘true’. Each chapter of the book holds a war story told by a various character or the author himself. As a focus, the chapter The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong has a lot of factors which should be examined for truth. Overall, I believe that the story told may not be factually true, but is emotionally true to the story teller, Rat Kiley. For every story told there are reasons to defend or deny its integrity.

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“In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It’s a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness” (44). A true war story is so extreme that its qualities are incredibly doubtable and must be questioned. Rat Kiley explained when he was stationed in a medic area near Vietnam’s village of Tra Bong medic Mark Fossie had written a letter to his girlfriend, Miss Mary Anne Bell. Fossie and Kiley determined that it may be possible to ‘ship’ her to the mission location. Six weeks later, she had arrived. The men surrounding Rat Kiley had found the story to be incredibly unbelievable. “‘It can’t happen,’ Sanders said. ‘Nobody ships his honey over to Nam. It don’t ring true. I mean, you just can’t import your own personal poontang.’ Rat shook his head. ‘I saw it, man. I was right there. This guy did it’”