Fact Verses Fiction in OBriens The Things They Carried Essay

Fact Verses Fiction in OBriens The Things They Carried The difference between fairy tales and state of war stories is that fairy tales gravel with Once upon a time, while war stories begin with Shit, I was there (Lomperis 41). How does one tell a good war baloney? Is it important to be accurate to the events that took place? Does the reader need to consider the narrator? In The Things They Carried, Tim OBrien examines what it takes to tell a good war story. He uses his own experiences in Vietnam in conjunction with his imagination to weave together a series of short stories into a novel. First, the reader must understand just what makes a good war story. The protagonist of the novel, Tim OBrien, gives us his interpretation of it in the chapter How to Tell a True War Story. A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper homosexual behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit if rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very overage and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil (OBrien 68-69). With this concept, we can assess and place value on the stories presented in The Things They Carried. Yet, it is still not that simple. The reader is continually challenged to question what is real and what is imagined. The evaluation of each narrator is constant. While the protagonist continues to remind the ... ...y matter if theyre true stories (Lomperis 54). Works Cited Bonn, Maria S. privy Stories Save Us? Tim OBrien and the efficacy of the text (The Vietnam War). look back Studies in Contemporary Fiction 36.1 (Fall 1994) 2-16. Callow ay, Catherine. How to tell a true war story Metafiction in The Things They Carried. CRITIQUE Studies in Contemporary Fiction 36.4 (Summer 1995) 249-258. Kaplan, Steven. The Undying Uncertainty of the Narrator in Tim OBriens The Things They Carried. CRITIQUE Studies in Contemporary Fiction 35.1 (Fall 1993) 43-53. Lomperis, Timothy J. Reading the Wind The books of the Vietnam War . Durham Duke UP, 1987. Neilson, Jim. Warring Fictions American Literary Culture and the Vietnam War Narrative. Jackson Mississippi UP, 1998 OBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried . New York Broadway, 1990.