Goodnight

Okay so I am finally almost caught up on the reading and have thoroughly enjoyed The Things They Carried so far. This is by far my favorite novel we have read this year, or actually short stories. Many themes have come to my attention as I have been reading. One of the most obvious themes is O’Briens blending of the real and unreal, the tangible and the imaginative. This is most evident in the chapter How to Tell a True War Story. Constantly in the chapter O’Brien contradicts himself in an effort to convey the reason why soldiers need to tell their stories. O’Brien says, “And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed”. “In other cases you can’t even tell a true war story. Sometimes it’s just beyond telling”. O'Brien's point in this story is that the real connection is between war and love. Something you would not exactly hear in your average war story. This theme is also evident in an earlier story. Lt. Cross believes that because he loves Martha, he does not fulfill his duty toward his men. He literally thinks that because he chose love over war, Ted Lavender is dead. O'Brien believes, however, that love comes with the territory of war. As we are reading the stories its hard to remember the work is a collection of fiction. I struggle as I want to believe the stories are true.. I feel for the soldiers and the pain of war and suffering. This is exactly what O’Brien wants to accomplish in writing these stories. He wants others to understand what its like to go through a war. And that’s what telling a True War Story is all about.