Brenda Lee
IB HL English
The Things They Carried Commentary: How to Tell a True War Story
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a work of metafiction that manages to
test fiction in its very nature through the chapter, “How to Tell a True War Story.” The
blurred line between reality and the imagination is explored by the given account—the
reader is alienated and forced to think, does the truth matter in a war story? This chapter
alternates in narration between O’Brien as a soldier and as a storyteller, examines the
duplicity of whether story truth or happening truth is more vital, and explores the
reactions which listeners and readers alike are to gather from these stories.
O’Brien opens the chapter with three powerful words which set the tone for his
debate throughout the chapter, “This is true.” (O’Brien 67). Narration of this chapter
continues in first person where O’Brien narrates a story, analyzes its validity, and moves
on to tell another aspect of the story, taking it apart. This syntax makes the reader feel
interrupted and disoriented. You have barely had time to absorb the heartbreaking story
before O’Brien switches gears, saying, “A true war story is never moral” (68). He sets
qualifications for true war stories—“absolute and uncompromising allegiance to
obscenity and evil” (69) and manages to clarify in his next pause in storytelling warning
that “it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen” and
acknowledges people perceive things differently and thus will tell the stories differently
(71).
The stories are told with beautiful figurative language-personification, imagery,
“war has the feel…of a great ghostly fog, thick and permanent. There is no clarity.
Everything swirls,” and metaphor, in a tone where the reader is easily sucked in, only to
be jarred awake with the factual and almost conversational tone of O’Brien’s analyses.
To put things in context, the previous chapter, “Friends”, mentions Rat Kiley as
the helpful medic for the dying friend. “Dentist” follows as a goodbye story to Curt
Lemon. O’Brien includes foreshadowing and post-acknowledgement of both characters
surrounding the chapter to bring them together and create an undercurrent within the
chapter where the reader is forced to see how the order, though on the surface seem
random, is actually predetermined.
The core theme that a true war story cannot be factually believed is repeated
multiple times throughout the chapter. One finds that “true” in war story does not mean
the happening truth, but how well it relates to the appropriate emotional response, or
story truth. The ultimate example of this is the heroic story of a man throwing himself
onto a grenade to save his comrades. Whether or not anyone survives, “Absolute
occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and by a total lie; another thing may not
happen and be truer than the truth…That’s a true story that never happened” (83-84).
The author leaves the reader with mixed emotions, where they may feel cheated from the
happening truth, but they also experience the emotion the storyteller wants them to feel—
the story reality that “a true war story is never about war” and there is always an deeper
meaning to be discovered(85).