The Things They Carried: O'Brien's War, Fiction, and Truth

Introduction: O'Brien's Approach to War Narrative

Tim O'Brien's 1990 collection of war stories The Things They Carried is focused on conveying a realistic image of warfare from a first-person perspective. Even though the writer clearly wants readers to be deeply affected by the book, he does not hesitate to introduce fictional passages in an attempt to make it more accessible. It actually appears that O'Brien sees romanticism in a place where most people fail to see it, and he takes advantage of the fact that he is essentially writing a historical account. This demonstrates that he considers it impossible for someone to express an objective opinion about warfare so long as that individual experienced it directly.

While one might be inclined to believe that the writer is not very similar to the character of Tim in the book — due to the fictional elements in the collection — the reality is that they are actually very similar. As one scholar notes, "Readers should note and remember that although the actual and fictional O'Briens have some experiences in common, The Things They Carried is a work of fiction and not a non-fiction autobiography" (Colella 1).

O'Brien's affinity for reading played an important role in shaping his character as a young man and in influencing him to become a writer. The Things They Carried embodies most of his ambitions and is meant to emphasize that it is wrong for society to support the idea of warfare, regardless of the circumstances involved. The collection provides readers with the chance to gain a more complex understanding of war by looking at it through the eyes of individuals who actually experienced it. O'Brien brought together a series of elements present in his earlier works in an attempt to paint a vivid picture of combat.

While there are many texts related to warfare and to how people need to get actively involved in denouncing it, O'Brien's collection is easily distinguishable from the rest. This writer managed to provide a somewhat comic outlook on subjects that are, at their core, deeply serious. This was made possible by his focus on detaching himself from the ordinary and showing that warfare is practically part of life — part of what humanity is.

Fiction and Autobiography in the Collection

The collection's title is essential in helping readers understand the message O'Brien wants to convey. Although he experienced warfare firsthand and witnessed the suffering it provoked, he did not hesitate to use a rather understated title for his stories. His detailed descriptions of the physical objects that he and his fellow soldiers carried can lead some readers to think that he regards the physical burden of carrying heavy equipment as one of the most important problems associated with warfare — an interpretation that ultimately gives way to something far deeper.

O'Brien apparently thinks of short stories as an end in themselves, offering readers the opportunity to see the bigger picture by becoming familiar with characters and situations that recur across several stories. This strategy is especially effective, as "the inter-woven stories (some of which are more like commentaries on stories than actual stories) collectively form a dramatic and discursive novel" (Society for the Study of the Short Story).

The Role of Short Stories and Story-Truth

The Things They Carried provides an intriguing perspective on the short story form, and O'Brien mastered this genre as he developed the ideas that fuel the collection. The work enabled him to address a series of intense topics and to demonstrate how fiction can effectively accompany — and even enhance — realistic stories. As one source observes, "Writing with humor and sympathy, O'Brien offers his stories as a kind of history of the war because 'story-truth is truer sometimes than the happening truth' (203); as O'Brien remarks in one of his commentary chapters, 'What stories can do, I guess, is make things present' (204)" (Society for the Study of the Short Story).

This concept of metafiction — stories that reflect on their own status as stories — is central to understanding what O'Brien achieves in the collection. By openly acknowledging the invented elements in his narratives, he paradoxically makes the emotional content feel more authentic and more urgent than a straightforward memoir might.

Conclusion: The Deeper Purpose of O'Brien's Stories

One of the most intriguing things about O'Brien is that he spends much of his narrative energy justifying his intention to write and trying to convince readers that he does not necessarily want to speak about the dark nature of warfare. Yet all of his efforts ultimately result in providing people with an entirely new perspective on combat. What is even more remarkable is that this new, darkly comic and seemingly disengaged perspective proves more unsettling than the accounts society is accustomed to encountering from individuals who witnessed warfare firsthand.

It is difficult to arrive at a simple conclusion regarding The Things They Carried and the purpose for which O'Brien wrote it. A first encounter with the collection is likely to give the impression that it is easy to read and does not involve intense emotion — but that impression is precisely what the writer intended to create. The work is far more than a collection of stories. It is, in effect, a novel of deep psychological ideas designed to have a powerful effect on virtually any reader.

All things considered, most readers who come across the collection are likely to agree with O'Brien that war is not only damaging because of the physical harm it causes — it is also destructive from a psychological standpoint. Moreover, the number of victims is even greater when this perspective is taken into account, since society knows little about these individuals and they are largely ignored as the world continues to move forward, while they stand aside and recognize that they will never be the same.

Works Cited

Colella, Jill. CliffsNotes on O'Brien's The Things They Carried. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.

Greasley, Philip A. Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, Volume 1: The Authors. Indiana University Press, 2001.

McNally, John. The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist. University of Iowa Press, 2010.

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.

Society for the Study of the Short Story. A Reader's Companion to the Short Story in English. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001.