Class
Teacher
Date
Critical Review for “The Things They Carried” On October 1st 1946, author Tim O’Brien was born. He would soon go on to right the intense, detailed, and slightly-gory novel titled The Things They Carried. In this memoir, O’Brian tells a plethora of short stories about his time in Vietnam fighting for the United Stated Army. O’Brian includes a dozen of his fellow privates of which were in the very same platoon as himself. Many of the short stories in this worldly novel take place somewhere within Vietnam Canada, and the small home towns of a couple other characters. Author Tim O’Brien uses a plethora of short stories to compose the book "The Things They Carried" If you look closely into this particular book, you can actually find more themes than one would normally expect. One theme you could look at is that in this novel, O’Brian shows that "A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done.” – (O’Brian). In this quote you see that there would be no censorship or denying the truth in his stories or of course the text in “The Things They Carried”. Another theme that could be looked at is that "A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth."- (O’Brian). Now this particular quote from the book shows that sometimes, in order to give the full effect or to really impact a reader/listener, you might have to make certain false comments. This could be applied public speeches, blogs and many more situations in life. The author’s purpose is seemingly to show that not all things in life are pretty or peaceful. To show that inhumane things such as fighting, killing etc. have to be done to get what you want. Or more specifically what we all want. Again, the author feeds in small fibs or white lies to intensify and put his stories into retrospect. "I want you to feel