The Things They Carried Essay

The Things They Carried Essay Number Three Tim OBriens raw, The Things They Carried, is a novel composed of contend stories from the Vietnam War. OBrien tells the stories of not solitary(prenominal) himself, yet stories from the workforce with whom he fought alongside. The main idea of the book is what these men carried, which was not only tangible objects, but emotions as well. Digging deeper into this meaning, many of the stories were changed from their true and genuine selves to half true and half fictitious stories ground on that persons emotions at that time. Many writers, such as Tim OBrien, bob up more true statement in fiction than on the actual occurring display case.In Tim OBriens The Things They Carried there is a blurred line amidst detail and fiction and the real Tim OBrien and Tims slip. Tims character represents his truth from his emotional views and the narrator Tim tells what very happened. Tim OBriens character in The Things They Carried looked in th e faces of the dead, but in reality he did not permit the strength to look into the faces of the deceased. He could call this his get truth because his emotions ar what he was writing down. All he did was take the focussing that he felt and added details and faces to events that actually occurred.For most people this is their own truth. Everybody has their own truth because memories are driven by emotion and the emotions can sometimes temporarily or even permanently block out what really happened and a degree from factual events is created. Throughout the majority of the novel Tim uses character Tim over narrator Tim, but he does occasionally distinguish fact from emotions. During the instance when OBriens daughter asks him if he has ever killed a man OBrien hesitates in a truthful answer. It seems as though he is greatly conflicted because he feels as if he has killed a man, but he never actually killed a man.It is as if by him organism a part of the war and not helping the dy ing men it is a fault of his that he could not help to save them by stopping it. His emotions told him he was a murderer who looked in the face of his victim, who was a young boy he created a life degree for when in reality that boy was never his kill. To the reader it seems that he is contradicting himself, but in actuality he is oppositeiating between himself and his emotional character. In the chapter, How to Write a honest War Story, OBrien tells the reader about the blurred line between fact and fiction.He tells us what a true war bill is and what it is not. fit in to OBrien a true war story is never moral, instructing, or uplifting. He also tells us that in a true war story, its difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. He also tells us that it is a hard an exact truth as it seemed. This is where the lines become blurred. As it seems from the way OBrien speaks, men do not have the courage to beauty entire incidences such as Curt Lemons death. He w rites that they watch pieces of it, close their eyes, and open them some more. Everything they remember seems true to them based on the facts.Readers may never truly know what happened, but they do know what that person was feeling based on the way the story was told. There is no clear line between fact and story for author Tim OBrien. To him the lines blur together from time apart from the event and remembering the emotions felt. His novel The Things They Carried represents this idea through its use of storytelling. All of his wretched stories pieced together to create the novel each represent a different form of truth for different men along with Tim. OBrien was successful in using this blurred line between fact and story for his war stories.