The Things They Carried : True vs. False

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 11th grade February 2008

download word file, 7 pages 0.0

How do you decide what is true and what is false? In war the line blurs even more. We hear war stories and wonder about the truth of these stories. We love to believe the stories of heroism and bravery. Now how do we know that these stories are real and not created propaganda? The Things They Carried by Tim O?Brien is a fiction book that shines some light on war stories. This complex book focuses on a complex war. The Vietnam War was complex for the reasons surrounding it. Some of the reasons were; the question why we were over there, governments that told half truths on what was going on, and the style of fighting was totally different compared to the past wars. This new style is called guerrilla warfare. O?Brien writes stories that make you believe that they are real, but the book is fiction. In ?How to Tell a True War Story? he gives his rules on telling a real war story, and maybe help us clear up some of the false stories about the war.

I will take some of these rules and stories to prove if they are real or not.

One of O?Brien?s stories is ?Church?. This is a true war story because it has nothing to do with the war, but deals with two men?s thoughts on religion. One of the rules O?Brien said is ?A true war story is never about war?(83) proves that this is true. A true war story is about embarrassment, memory, sorrow, and love. (O?Brien) It?s about the land and the hump. An example is in WWII when the U.S.A. dropped the atomic bomb. It?s not about the dropping of the atomic bomb, but about the thoughts and struggles in the minds of the crew...