Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried Essay

In The Things The, O’Brien talks a fair amount about himself. It becomes clear that he was affected greatly by his experiences of the war and that he still has to try to cope with them everyday. Also clear is that he leaves whether or not the characters of this book are real or not as ambiguous. He leaves this ambiguous to make the point that the truth of the story doesn’t matter. What actually matters is the feelings his characters make him and the readers feel. He makes this clear by dedicating his book to his characters, by writing a conversation between himself and one of these characters, and by actually telling us that what is factually true doesn’t matter, rather an emotional truth does matter. Also clear is that in order to cope with the guilt from the war, Tim O’Brien writes The Things They Carried.

Tim O’Brien dedicates his book to his characters in order to relieve the guilt he feels for surviving while his comrades died. The first thing a reader sees when opening the book is the dedication in eye-catching italics, which states “This book is lovingly dedicated to the men of

Alpha Company, and in particular to Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley,

O’Brien explicitly asserts that “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (139). O’Brien, as demonstrated here, is not interested in the physical reality of what happens, rather he is writing from an emotional standpoint. He also directly states “I feel guilty sometimes. Forty-three years old and I’m still writing war stories” (61). Writing war stories and guilt are clearly related things in his mind and he writes in order to cope with this guilt. This entire work, every little story, every random detail, and every character is a direct reflection of O’Brien working through his guilt in the only way he knows how: