After finishing Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, I can ultimately say that my thoughts at the beginning of the book are vastly different from what they are now. At first, I was very skeptical of O’Brien’s methods of storytelling. The way he emerges us in his emotional war stories and then right after mentions that there are fabricated aspects to most of his stories honestly annoyed me a little. I felt like I was being played with and not given the full picture and so I couldn’t understand the method behind his madness. But, later on, O’Brien makes it clear why he chooses to writes stories the way he does. With writing, it’s hard to convey true emotion through real truth experiences. Having not fought in the war, most of us are unable to feel what it’s like to be on the front lines where death could occur any second. In that kind of situation, one is always in a fight or flight mode with their adrenaline pumping 24/7. Even if one is just standing by as their friend kills a man, they still feel as if it was their own kill. As if they were the one that pulled the pin. As if it were their fault. But, if the real truth were told, it would be hard for a reader to experience the same emotions while sitting in a couch and reading the story by the fire. It’s just not the same.
So, in order to make up for that, O’Brien tells the story truth. He centers his story around those who were the protagonist of the situation, mirroring his own emotions during those times. So what if he adds or leaves out details here and there, the message is still the same. He was a man who was sent off to Vietnam to fight and has never been the same person since. The stories in between are to show us why. Why his experiences in Vietnam changed him and why he keeps writing stories about them later on.
In the last chapter, O’Brien explains his first love, Linda. Although he was only nine years old, he can honestly say that he loved her. As Zina said in class, this sort of love parallels with O’Brien’s love for his platoon. Even though he may have sat back during the war and listened to their stories, he was still there. He felt a love and connection with these men as he fought alongside of them. Although they were troubling times, they were good too. In a way, it seems as though O’Brien writes his stories to bring the good times back. The time where his brothers were right beside him. In a sort of sick way, O’Brien writes to bring his past back from the dead. When he writes on his stories in the war, it’s like he’s experiencing them once again, reliving the adrenaline rush and everything, and once he’s finished, he’s back to being a forty-three year old writer, so he writes another story. Although they were scary and troubling times, he misses them and the men he experienced them with.
It’s because of this that I have a newfound appreciation and sympathy for O’Brien. It just seems as though he can’t let his past go. Even if his past is dead and gone, he writes to bring it back and relive it once again. Although writing is seen as very therapeutic for some soldiers, I feel like it is doing the opposite for O’Brien. Bring back his past again and again doesn’t allow him to move on in his life. If he keeps writing on his time in the war, he will always be stuck in the past, unable to find a way out. So, although I enjoyed the book, I feel sad for O’Brien if his way of coping with his time in the war and making others understand his pain by making himself relive it all, over and over again.
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