The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

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A work's infallibility cannot be defined by imagination's input, facts become false when they are exaggerated. The Things They Carried, is a collection of short stories that revolve around The Vietnam War. Tim O'Brien takes the reader back in time to the late 1960s, and contemplates on experiences that emotionally scarred Vietnam soldiers. O'Brien shares multiple war stories that are claimed to be authentic during the war, and migrates to the 1980s in states like Iowa and MA to discuss how these stories have influenced his life. The Things They Carried, is a collection of false war stories, the stories' authenticity is altered in hopes of evoking strong emotions from readers.

Tim O'Brien invents stories to accomplish specific messages to readers. O'Brien shares a war story with readers about a baby buffalo, during the beginning he states that the story has been told many times and is indeed factual. The story is about one of the soldiers known as Rat Riley, he is then said to have nonchalantly murdered a baby buffalo without reason. O'Brien's analysis on Riley's heinous behavior is that war led him to kill the baby buffalo because war is hell. Riley uses the mammal as a way of releasing burdens that the war's negativity has put upon him, but then O'Brien divulges to the reader the story's invalidness when an outsider misunderstands the story's gist. "she wasn't listening...no Rat Riley. No trail junction. No baby buffalo. No vines or moss or white blossoms. Beginning to end, you tell her, it's all made up. Every goddamn detail- the mountains and the river and especially that poor dumb baby buffalo. None of it happened. None of it"(85). O'Brien prevaricated on Rat Riley's dark encounter with a baby buffalo because he wants his l...

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...nts it through a disastrous love story it catches reader’s attention. Riley uses Mary Anne as a symbolize for regular people, who are unexposed to war. But when Mary Anne is exposed to war’s grasp her whole persona changes. Riley changes the genuine story of how war changes people because he understands that a love story gone wrong is more interesting. Modifying the truth for popularity approbation should not be conducted because the truth is then gone. O’Brien modifies his stories’ authenticity to catch reader’s approbation, this causes his stories to lose their honesty. Facts that are altered are no longer facts.

Works Cited

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.
Bruckner, D. J. R. “A storyteller For the War That Won’t End.” The New York Times.The New York Times, 03 Apr. 1990. Web. 01 Jan. 2014.

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