The Things They Carried is an excellent model of the literature of the Vietnam War in the fictional short-story form. Story-telling is a very good way to bring the reader into the war and help him or her really understand the war from a soldier's perspective. Tim O'Brien is an outstanding story-teller. The stories that Tim O'Brien tells deal with love, hate, fear, pain, friends, enemies, and confu

This book is notable, especially for those readers who did not experience the Vietnam War, because it was written with much emotion and in a way that touches the heart of the reader. The quality of the story-telling forces the reader to feel what the soldiers were feeling and thinking, and brings a much better understanding to how the men and women involved in the war dealt with the horror that they saw. For example, O'Brien will describe a certain death scene in a way that is horrifying to the reader, as an example of what the soldiers had to endure on a day to day basis. He then goes on to describe the numbness that a soldier is forced to feel towards these types of things if he is to remain sane.

The reason for O'Brien's success in story-telling may be largely because he was a soldier of the Vietnam War himself. Anyone that experienced the war will be more successful in describing what it was like than someone who was not directly involved. In th

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Approximate Word count = 644
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)