Reflection For The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried, more like the things that I will carry forever, if there is any book I would say is the worst, is this book. BUT, it’s bad for all the GOOD reasons. I’ve read other war books that are good and EASY in making me put myself in the main characters position, but this book is definitely the opposite. Author Tim O’Brien continuously purposefully betrays his audience in order to construct a ‘truthful’ war story that makes the readers WISH to be in the characters position, not because he’s not good at being descriptive, but because his own truth of what war is like may not be the factual truth, therefore it is impossible for non-war exposed readers to truly understand war. Throughout the book, O’Brien details recollection
Most of O’Brien’s writing style derives from the “simple need to talk” portrays that his writing is a way to relief himself from mental and emotional woe. O’Brien keeps going back and forth from present to past, so doing the time you must re-read carefully of your settings and directed characters. We can see that O’Brien, instead of focusing on one character’s account throughout the stories, he gives many different points of view. One of the recollections O’Brien detailed, which took my breath away, was the Song Tra Bong part. Every single detail and emotion O’Brien included made me tremble to my core. O’Brien’s descriptive writing style made me want to close the book forever, lock it, burn it, and drench it with holy water because it. Was. Just. Too. Much. For example, one of the striking things O’Brien included in his writing was of an irony (comparison/pun) him and his platoon went through in Song Tra Bong, which was, “going through shit” literally and figuratively. Figuratively as in the struggles they went through and literally as in walking through a fecal