Innocence

I still strongly believe that the things we are left to carry after the end of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried are emotions. Maybe there is something else, another lesson learned, such as the truth of storytelling, but what I can’t leave behind after reading this novel are the emotions I felt while reading it.

Tim O’Brien describes his story in such detail that he creates a reality which draws the reader in until we feel as if it is real. This is a truly incredible talent since he tells us numerous times that the book is full of lies. Regardless though, we are still captivated by his outrageous stories, taking them at face-value. This is similar to Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. In Cat’s Cradle the narrator told us many times that everything in the book was a lie, yet we still are trying to dissect which parts of it are true and which parts are false.

When trying to determine the truth of a story it becomes important to recognize where each person places the value of truth. In The Things They Carried I placed the value of truth on the emotions evoked in me because these rung truer than the details of the story. I may not be able to relate to what the soldiers went through exactly but the detail was so perfect that I could imagine it. By creating powerful emotions in his reader, Tim O’Brien allows his book to speak truly to a broader audience.

In many of his chapters O’Brien writes about a loss of innocence. He mentions many times how the soldiers and medics are simply boys and often portrays them doing childish things to deal with the destruction around them. Two of the soldiers toss a smoke bomb back and forth, others create voices for the dead to deal with the war. Bobby Jorgenson, new to Vietnam, is too scared to help the narrator after he has been shot.

In the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong Mary Anne Bell is lost to the war. At first she is a beautiful, innocent young girl hidden from the grasps of Vietnam. Soon, however, she is consumed by it and comes back with tongues hanging around her neck. Obviously, we cannot relate to this story directly, yet we still find ourselves emotionally moving along with it. We feel connected to these characters and can sense the same emotions as them. When the novel ends, we may not remember the name of Mary Anne or which two soldiers were tossing the smoke bomb but we can still relate to and relive the emotions evoked in us while reading these passages.