Week 10: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (Penguin, 1990, paperback)

I’d read short stories from O’Brien’s book in the past, most notably “How To Tell a True War Story.” While that story itself is an engrossing exploration of the truth and illusion of war, reading it in within the context of the other interconnected stories in The Things They Carried provides more layering to the conflicts that define these character’s experiences.

Each separate story carries its own particular poignancy. The title story provides a catalog of the personal effects that each solider carries, laying the groundwork for the rest of the book. Of those, several stand out individually. “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” presents the transformation of youth into a soldier—however, the youth is a naive young girl who becomes a zen soldier, transformed by the intoxicating effects of war. “Speaking of Courage” explores the nature of courage through a returning soldier struggling with the absurd death of a platoon-mate.

While the stories themselves are powerful in exploring the nature of war, the real power of this novel is how O’Brien uses the narrative character of “O’Brien” to explore those issues. With this narrator as our guide, the boundary between the “happening truth” of autobiography and the “story truth” of fiction is blurred. Is it important that these events are true or fiction? Does that give them more or less weight in showing us the horrors of war? It does give the novel and the stories more texture and bring us closer to understanding how a soldier, even years later, struggles with the same questions.

Next week . . . Push by Sapphire.