The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: An Analysis

A Dive into the Past
The novel, The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien is an interesting work of literature. The storytelling relies on conveying feelings rather than actual facts of the events, and this allows for a unique, personal, yet also objective form of narration. The Things They Carried allows the reader to venture into the mind of the narrator and relive the author’s experiences, and finally understand that he has both moved on from the traumatic events, and has kept the impactful people alive in his memory and lives with them every day. The author’s storytelling leaves an open world of stories to be told further but concludes the story in a satisfactory way that gives the reader closure in the story.
The author explains to the reader in the chapter titled “Notes” that, “By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others… incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain”

(O’Brien 158). O’Brien makes it clear to the readers that the author does not weigh accurate facts as importantly as the information that will allow us to understand his feelings. The author also tells the readers later that, “Over the next several months, as it often happens, I managed to erase the story's flaws from my memory, taking pride in a shadowy, idealized recollection of its virtues,” (O’Brien 159-160). This pivotal quote shows the reader that the story will be lacking historically proven facts, and instead show how the author perceives the events and how they make him feel. His stories focus on his vision of how things affect people, almost a type of idealization, and he stays true to that all the way to the end. The ending explains how he lives day-to-day and has been living instead of about how he moves on and lives happily ever after. He does not use the style of storytelling that he learned as a way of therapy, but instead a method that forces him to relive memories and reimagine his friends and loved ones as alive. The images are not just shadows of a past caught on camera, but rather living beings, living through extemporaneous and spontaneous events, feeling and reacting, in his imagination. The true extent to which the characters are still alive in the author’s mind and living life truly demonstrates the conclusion where the author explains to the readers:
Right here, in the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see her as if through ice, as if I'm gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at all… I can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights.

I'm young and happy. I'll never die… when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story. (O’Brien 245-246). The narrator knows that the characters have died in reality, but in the vast complexes of his mind and imagination, the author recreates a world where they remain as existing and complex beings where they all spend time together as friends. The author accomplishes this through the understanding that he has of the characters and their personalities, rather than simply remembering their actions alone; a task that is possible by him exercising his new storytelling

technique.
The Things They Carried has an interesting way of storytelling, but it is just as effective as any other literary technique. The technique he uses not only allows the readers to connect with him at an emotional level, it also allows the author to let the characters develop as if they were living human beings. He shows this through his extensive knowledge of their personalities and the ways they live their lives; something that he manages to do by exploring many different ways to tell the stories of the characters. The ending allows the readers to understand that the author lives every day with his friends. By doing this, it shows he can overcome the trauma of losing nearly everyone he cares about. The ending clearly demonstrates to the reader that the author will continue living in his world of imagination when he needs someone to be there for him, while still being aware of reality. As the readers grow accustomed to this and begin to understand the story from his perspective, they have a clear reading path that takes them on multiple journeys that begin with each story but end at his conclusion, allowing the readers to realise they will have more stories in the author’s mind as in life, but have a conclusive ending in which they know that the characters have lived their lives fully.