True or False

    The idea of what is true and what is false is one that should be cemented in fact, but O’Brien does something spectacular in The Things They Carried. O’Brien blends the truth with fiction and creates this story of the Vietnam War. The story is told so well that it is hard to believe what happened while O’Brien was over there and what he made up for the story. This style keeps the story exciting and spices up the war and allows for creativity.
 
  I find this mystery between deciding if what I am reading is, in fact, a true story or just something made up for the sake of the story very conflicting. The fact that O’Brien is using real experiences and only building off them to generate the fictional pieces I think it is safe to assume a majority of the story is fact. He makes me want to believe him because he tells the story so well and presents the emotion of all the soldiers in a form that is easy to read and absorb. Another reason I take a majority of the story to be true is all the self-confidence of characters as they tell their story. They all open up with saying you probably won’t believe this, but it happened. Vietnam is so hard to believe in itself why couldn’t some of these things have happened? Those who did not fight in Vietnam have no clue what happened there, and I think that is part of the magic of this story we have to believe what is being said because we have no proof it didn’t.

Comments

  1. juliaDecember 1, 2018 at 9:17 PM

    Nick, I think you have good insight into the fact vs fiction aspect of the book. I too would like to believe that most of the story is true and I think that what is not true was definitely based on real events. I thought it was interesting when we learned that the whole part where he went to the lodge and considered going to Canada did not actually occur. Perhaps that was a fictional physical experience he created in order to demonstrate a real mental struggle he had.

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