Blog Three NC

O'Brien's work 'The Things They Carried' may be the most expressive form of Vietnam literature to ever be published. The book may look like a novel, but its complex structure tells stories before even actually reading a word. The words that he has written, however, tell only about the Vietnam War at its most shallow level, but the human experience and how it is impacted by war before, during, and after is where the book truly shines.

The structure of the book is different from a novel in that while the reader is following O'Brien's trail of thoughts, s/he reads one small flashback after the other. Though often there is no direct continuity between the story themselves, O'Brien makes the reader feel as if he is an ever-present narrator throughout the book, guiding s/he through his thoughts almost like a tour-guide. The end of this journey takes place in a chapter which finishes on a note about life and death. The name, 'The Lives of the Dead,' helps the reader to understand that this final chapter was selected to end with remembering his childhood sweetheart because he wants the reader to understand that just as his memories are preserved in this work of art long after his death, the dead continue to live with him, and through living in him, they live through his art. By O'Brien's intention, those dead now live within the reader.

In discussing life and death in his finale, he is in fact focusing in on characters, characters whom have been discussed through the entirety of the book. The first chapter acts as a vehicle to help develop these characters in preparation for O'Brien's reflection in 'Lives of the Dead.' Bearing the same name as the book, 'The Things They Carried' discusses the items that his fellow soldiers carried. Through examining these artifacts, the reader can make assumptions and develop images of the people that these characters were. But to me, what O'Brien is really trying to express is that the metaphor of the artifacts is actually a metaphor (a super metaphor?) for peeking into the soul of O'Brien himself. Though the book lets the reader learn about O'Brien through his character's guidance in examining his experiences, the reader in turn can see who the real O'Brien is through everything he has created.

In choosing to call the main character O'Brien, O'Brien wants the reader to believe and associate this character with himself, the author. O'Brien the author, however, informs the reader that the book is fiction at the beginning. Reading between the lines, O'Brien desire is for the reader to read the book with the same intensity fervor as if watching an action-packed thriller on the big screen. He believes that this is not possible in writing non-fiction as the total sum of the facts distorts his intention as an author, to pass on a message or to teach a lesson rather than to offer history. O'Brien even writes "A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth." The truth that he attempts to tell is not a body count or a simple who-was-where, but a human truth that goes beyond the boundaries that non-fiction allows. Whether everything happened as he wrote or not, the idea to take away is that it must be examined as fiction to be read correctly.