Things They Carried
..., the complex characters that O’Brien writes about, as well as the author’s unique perspective on war stories in general. O’Brien writes the novel with detail and vivid imagery. He describes events as they would seem through the eyes of a common soldier. Once, O’Brien describes a soldier’s reaction to seeing a dead Vietnamese teenager. He writes, “He put his hand on the dead boy’s wrist. He was quiet for a time, as if counting a pulse, then he patted the stomach, almost affectionately, and he used Kiowa’s hatchet to remove the thumb” (15). O’Brien also alternates from documentary style writing to complex interactions among the soldiers. His detail and varied points of view suggest that the events of the book were actually took place. Tim O’Brien talks about the lives of a small group of soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. He clearly describes each character’s unique personality making them each respond differently to a certain situation. He shows how by interacting with one another the soldiers expressed what they really thought about the war and death. O’Brien writes “…One of these nights I will be lying dead out there in the dark and nobody’ll find me except the bugs…I can’t keep seeing myself dead” (245). The soldiers in “the things they carried” had the fears and trauma of real soldiers in Vietnam. O’Brien’s realistic description of each character suggests that these were real people who fought in the Vietnam war. O’Brien discusses the story’s authenticity several times throughout the book. He writes a chapter called “How to tell a true war story” where he discusses whether the book is true. He begins the chapter with a revealing statement “This is true” (74), a direct statement from the author to the reader the novel “The Things They Carried” is based on a tr...