Perceived truth vs. Actual truth

       After many class discussions regarding manipulation and what is truth, I opened up The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien with my guard up.  In doing so I quickly picked up on how O’Brien tells his story contrasting the perceived truth versus the actual truth.  It is difficult to tell where the division between the two truths lie, but there is a definite difference. 

With O’Brien’s focus on the men themselves, as opposed to the action they are involved in, the perceived truth comes across as how the soldiers carry themselves and seem on a superstitious level.  In reality, or what could be considered the actual truth, the men are experiencing something different on a more substantial level.  The narrator explained reality vs. perception well in the first chapter when he compares all the men to actors and how the war was scripted.  Except this “act” has taken on a life of its own.  The truth was blurred, however surreal their actions may feel, it is all very true. 

Another grey area between perceived and actual truth lay in the thoughts of the men.  O’Brien writes about all the things the men have to “hump”, yet what seemed to be the heaviest burden was their own thoughts.  He wrote how “They all carried ghosts” (p.9) and that “Imagination was killer” (p.10).  Both of these descriptions relay how the thoughts of the soldiers took on a reality, for Jimmy Cross this pertained mainly to the love of his life Martha.  Martha drew Cross’s attention away from war and into an entirely different reality.  Although on some level Cross understands the love is different, he holds onto the romance she sends him as a silver lining.