The Things They Carried is written in a unique style that lends itself perfectly to a war story. The book is written in a slightly disjointed style and skips around a lot. This fits with the line “Often in a true war story, there is not even a point”, because many of these stories may or may not be relevant to the entire book. (82) Many times in the book Tim O’Brien references the fact that war is chaos, and the book is written the same way. The ordered chaos makes it seem like you are living the authors’ memories that have suddenly been jogged, then hastily written down in no particular order. He will skip from present day to the war from one chapter to the other, furthering the illusion that the book is written chaotically. The stories also may or may not be true, which complicates reading, but also enforces his statement that “in a true war story, nothing is absolutely true”. (82) This means that in the midst of all the chaos, what you saw can be very easily mixed up with what you thought you saw. The book is written the same way in that he keeps repeating that parts of the stories may or may not be completely true.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1990. Print
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I think that this was a great summary of the book “The Things They Carried” and it is very true that this book repeats the same idea that war is impossible to understand. I also think that the author does a fantastic job of reinforcing this idea through is stories of war.
ReplyDeleteBy Taylor Perdue