The Things They Carried by Tim OBrien - Essay Example

The stories tell about a group of soldiers engaged in wartime activities. Most of them are there since they have been compelled to do so. The narrator himself feels that the war is not worth sacrificing his life for. Although the book is filled with stories of the Vietnam War, it is not a war story. It does not tell about the battles fought or the causes behind them. It is about the search of answers by a man about the logic behind wars and making sense of the brutality that one sees during the war. The Vietnam War shattered the idea of American culture because of the enormity of evil celebrated during the entire period of war. The war and its consequences changed a soldier’s philosophy of life. The author states that a war story can never give a message on morality because of the grave sins that are committed by the soldiers on the battlefield –
“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done” (O’Brien, 65).

A war can never be a solution to anything and can never be moral and nor can the incidents related to war be justified. The only thing that war is capable of doing is cultivating hatred in the hearts that were innocent before joining the war. This emphasizes the uselessness of war as long as a nation’s dreams are concerned. The dreams, which could have blossomed amongst the young people of a nation, finally end in facing the harsh truth of war and fighting for a cause that could never be moral.

In the chapter Good Form, he drew the line between “happening-truth” and “story-truth”. He recounted a soldier he once killed near the village of My Khe. In this context, the author portrays the real image of the war he witnessed. The author illustrates the frightful sight of a man he killed in the war. In his young days, he was scared to look at the reality and the bodies of dead soldiers in a war. He faces the truth after twenty years and encounters the reality that he has killed the man lying in the center of My Khe village (O’ Brien, 172). With this, he tells us that the feelings that are evoked in a situation are much more real and lasting than any “happening-truth”. These feelings show that war can impart guilt and loss of lives which from a human side cannot justify the origin of the war. This was especially true in the case of the prolonged Vietnam War where the young people of the nations were forced to take part without realizing why and for whom they were fighting.

Therefore, the book reflects his philosophy on war and its futility to a nation’s culture and dreams. It was clear that he carried the burden of the war and his wartime activities long after the war ended. He gave clear details of the war in most chapters, but what stands out is the blur between fact and fiction in his work.