Tim O’Brien is the author of the collection of short stories, The Things They Carried. A renowned American writer, William Timothy O’Brien became famous for writing Vietnam War centered novels. Aside from The Things They Carried, many recognize O’Brien for Going after Cacciato. (Herzog 10) Born in Austin, Minnesota on October 1, 1946, O’Brien spent most of his childhood in Worthington. Being there provided him with a chance at developing both his imagination and artistic sensibility. (Herzog 10) Furthermore, the location became a model for some of the stories in The Things They Carried. One of the main reasons he wrote this collection of short stories was due to the ignorance he considered existed among the general public about the Vietnam War. With most of the characters being semi-autobiographical, O’Brien provides some basis for understanding of what the Vietnam War was really like and thus demonstrating the sense of uncertainty both in the Vietnam War and in his own life during that time. The main argument for O’Brien and his work in The Things They Carried is that war is nothing like what people imagine it to be, it is far worse and the uncertainty of everyday life in war, is what makes it so horrible. If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home is Tim O’Brien’s autobiographical account of his tour of duty in Vietnam during the war. Published in 1973, the memoir takes readers through an average day for a soldier in the Vietnam War. Just like in The Things They Carry, O’Brien describes a small number of ‘grunts’ he encounters and the psychological effects of the war. Spending his time in Alpha Company, he mentions the horrible effects of the various mines encountered and the maiming and disfigurement of both civilians and combatants. (O'Brien 125-126) He gives another example of an accidental shelling of a lagoon village Alpha Company tried to protect as well as a brief moment of the My Lai Massacre when he is airlifted away. The Charlie Company in the story are under investigation for the massacre. (O'Brien 136) These scenes promote a sense of the tragedy and insanity that was the Vietnam War, educating the public on the true horrors of war in general.

Kaplan discusses in a 1993 article, the uncertainty of the narrator in The Things They Carried. Additionally, Kaplan reinforces the ignorance of the Vietnam War and the terrifying truth of it. “The Vietnam War was in many ways a wild and terrible work of fiction written by some dangerous and frightening storytellers…the United States decided what constituted good and evil, right and wrong, civilized and uncivilized, freedom and oppression for Vietnam…” (Kaplan 43) Elaborating further, Kaplan describes the uncertainty of the Vietnam War, stating yes was no longer yes and so forth. That uncertainty of the status of everything in the war, whether people lived or died, morality and the effects of immorality, it all...

Tim O’Brien created a world within these short stories that mimicked the environment he felt when he was in Vietnam. By providing such an uncertainty in the narrator and the setting, it continues to push the image of what an American civilian had of the Vietnam War. No longer are there impressions of good guys versus bad guys, and obedient soldiers. It is expressed both in The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home. Such images of blown up body parts and rogue soldiers, death, grief, it provides that fear and awakening to the reality of war.
Aside from revealing the truth of the war through reality-based experiences, O’Brien also used his imagination much like he did in his childhood to further provide that sense of uncertainty. “…takes the act of trying to reveal and understand the uncertainties about the war one step further, by looking at it through the imagination.” (Kaplan 44) By utterly destroying the fine line that divides fact from fiction, more so than he did in Cacciato, he makes good on his effort to eliminate ignorance of the events of the Vietnam War. A good example of this is a description O’Brien makes of a man who experienced an explosion. “He fell on his back. His rubber sandals had been blown off. He lay at the center of the trail, his right leg bent beneath him, one eye shut, his other eye a huge star-shaped hole.” (O'Brien 127) Such descriptions he may have encountered in his real life experiences of the war. Or, he may have just imagined a scenario based on the situations he went through. That kind of scene brings uncertainty, but the uncertainty reveals so much for not just the reader, but reveals something about the writer.

Going back to that scene, it feels like the person is not real. The star-shaped hole, the rubber sandals. These words feel juxtaposed with each other. Almost as if, one part of it was real and the other was part of an action movie. But that is often how soldiers experience war. Some of the elements do not feel real. Perhaps it could be shock or a surreal moment, the memory of events like this, remain both real and imagined. O’Brien does a great job of providing real and imagined scenarios that bleed into each other.

O’Brien does a great job of demonstrating to the reader that soldiers are people. The fears personalities and feelings of these soldiers add to the uncertainty such as the uncertainty of whether someone will live or die and provides further reinforcement of the brutality of war. “Some carried themselves with a sort of wistful resignation, others with pride or stiff soldierly discipline or good humor or macho zeal. They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it.” (O'Brien 22) Use of ‘wistful’, of ‘stiff’, and ‘discipline’, again there…