Storytelling in Tim O’ Brien’s The Things They Carried operates on multiple levels. On the surface level, O’ Brien deals with the overarching plot involving the troops. The next layer contains the stories of the troops, and the deepest layer contains reflections on the value of these stories both in the context of the war and then the post-war. The fact that the novel is divided up as such gives O’ Brien plenty of opportunity to blur the lines between reality and imaginary plots, and he takes advantage of this throughout The Things They Carried.
In “The Lives of the Dead,” O’ Brien speaks to his belief that stories have the power to give an entire life to those who have passed on. He refers to his childhood love Linda who passes away from a brain tumor when they are nine and how he spends his nights inventing stories to help him ease his grief (O’ Brien 213). O’Brien does the same thing with the man that he kills with a grenade in “The Man I Killed,” which is not a story about the act of killing as much as it is inventing a past and future for the unnamed, skinny man who perishes at O’Brien’s hands (O’Brien 118). The fact that O’ Brien admits to inventing pleasant stories to preserve happy memories of the dead subtly implies that any one of his chapters containing heroism could be a collection of lies, especially his remembrance of Linda, which bears a grim resemblance to his grief involving the nameless grenade victim.
The collection further explores the very role and purpose of “war stories,” and how they can be told “correctly” and how to tell whether or not one is “true” (O’ Brien 64). There is a rhythm to war stories O’ Brien explains; there is a level of detail to be expected. O’Brien establishes rules for telling war stories in the chapter How to Tell a True War Story, and it presents a poignant irony given the fact that war exists in a space that largely lacks rules. The role of these war stories during the war is to keep the soldiers’ minds off of death. This vague rule can leave room for many dishonest stories. A war story (according to O’ Brien) provides an account that speaks to the bond of the men who fight and die together, while recognizing that the greatest truth of a war story is the visceral feeling it fosters in the audience. O’Brien’s collection argues that war stories, due to their complexity, their amorality, and their ability to give a voice to the voiceless, are the most authentic medium to accurately communicate wartime experiences-factual or not. Thus, O’ Brien articulates that truth is not necessary in war, and that is why it is so difficult to decipher between the layers of O’ Brien’s novel.
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