The Things They Carried

Journal #1

Address the issue of truth and fiction

Addressing the issue of truth and fiction in “The Things They Carried”, is really addressing the central theme of the book in my opinion. What O’Brien tries to get the reader to understand is the uncertainties of his novel through imagination. He divides fact from fiction and shows throughout the book that fiction can often in times be truer then facts or truth. He talks about happening truth and story truth and the differences between them. He tries to tell the story to get the “full truth” yet from the start of the book he portrays or at least the way he sees it as itself is ambiguous at best. The more I think about this question the cloudier and more confused I get. I have to keep going back to what I truly believe and that is keep it simple regardless of how complex the situation can be. Of course people are going to create imagination and exaggeration in their stories or experiences through their own version for their own benefit. I believe all of us define our reality that we live in from our own experiences and whoever we let socially engineered us. What is truth and what is not? I honestly do not know but I do know that I create my world or reality with the truths I want to believe which I suspect I have done so through my experiences, emotions, who engineered me, etc...This is the world I created. I try to keep things very simple and factual but I do not. I find myself on occasions ignoring what I believe in by keeping things simple and factual and exaggerate and imagine the stories I tell to fill the void of emotion. That is at least how I justify it to myself. But I tend to believe it is more than that. I think I want people to be interested in me and my stories. And as we know people are not interested in just facts. That is boring. I believe this is what O’Brien does in his book. He tells story truth to get the reader to feel emotion for his story. The irony is he does this not only for the reader as he says in the book but for himself as well. I truly believe we all do this for the reasons that are very similar.

What are some of the things you carried?

The first chapter of Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried”, really focuses on the different things soldiers carried during the war. These things they carried played an integral part in their lives, being physical and mental in nature. I think the point that O’Brien was trying to make is the weight that the soldiers were carrying was not necessarily physical objects but rather emotional baggage that was a direct cause from the war. “They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run, or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all for it can never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture”(20). When