Outside A Dog

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien writes, “In a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe ‘Oh.’” (pg.77)

This book definitely left me saying “Oh”, and “Wow”, as well. I’m not typically one for war stories, but this one is so powerful and moving that when I was finished — and often between chapters — I just sat and thought. O’Brien’s novel is fiction posing as a memoir, telling the stories of the men in his company as they fought in Vietnam, telling the stories and the truths of war. Just about every chapter is its own story, but they weave together to give a larger glimpse into the lives of the men who battled both the enemies and themselves.

Three-quarters of the way through the novel, O’Brien tells us, “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth.” (pg. 179) The Things They Carried may not be the truth in the strictest sense of the word. These stories may not have happened exactly as O’Brien put them to paper, but they’re beautifully written, touching, and emotionally true.

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The Things They Carried also has the distinction of being the first book I’ve read this year on the “1,001 Books You Should Read Before You Die” list, based on the first edition of the book of the same name. I’m trying to make a dent in the first edition before tackling the second.