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The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien Summary

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Storytelling is an important part of our world. Regardless of whether the story being told was true or fantasy. This is because we learn and grow from stories no matter where they come from. We as humans take the good, the bad, and the ugly from the stories we read and hear. We take them as they are and for what they are made of. Tim O’brien’s story “The Things They Carried”, most definitely comprises all of this. His story is about the stories of various men and some women during the Vietnam war and the things they carried with them. Indeed, the story is filled with made up parts and some true parts. For most of the time, the reader doesn’t know which is which. But O’brien makes it clear that the truth of a story doesn’t need to be true in order to explain truth. “What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again.” O’brien explains in this quote, that the story he is telling is enabling him to feel the emotions of the memories he had and bring those moments from long ago back fresh into his mind. He can attach certainty to uncertainty and make sense of what had happened in his life. He came to the understanding …show more content…

The fundamental idea of truth was in his mind, but he needed the right words and situations in order to flesh out the truth he was telling. All the characters and events in “The Things They Carried”, help tell O’brien’s truth. This book helps shed light on the toll that war takes on a person. That even the smallest of things can mean so much in the gravest of times. The storytelling helps us understand that these small things become big parts of who we are in a time where the world tries to take all that you have

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