The Things They Carrried - Book Report/Review Example

In “Notes” Norman writes a seventeen page letter to O’Brien explaining him of how he hasn’t been right after returning from war and goes ahead to hang himself in YMCA. This clearly depicts post traumatic stress disorders most veterans undergo psychologically and this could have drove the writer to write the book in an attempt to get relieved of his burden and share it with others. In most circumstances, it is usually the guilt of killing or getting tortured in war that brings this psychological stress.

In as much as O’Brien went to war, then why did he choose to write his own experience in fictitious manner? For O’Brien to make his writers believe the truth, he wrote his book in a fictitious way so as to get to the hearts of his audience. Living in a world where people were at war and only bad news reached home, writing a true story would have been a disaster since it would get less attention. The only way to get to his audience was to come up with a fictitious story of the war in a manner people could enjoy to read.

The book generally tries to focus more on the personal experiences of the writer and his friends and not on the details of the Vietnam War so as to give another perspective about wars. In a time when wars were the order of the day, O’ Brien tried to bring the essence of war from another perspective. He wrote this book while the Vietnam War was still ongoing and it was somehow a call to other people to question the reason for going to war.O’Brien might also have been faced with the fact that it is hard to explain the truth without adding fictitious things.

A number of real events at war are difficult to narrate unless you were actually there, and by him trying to look at war from a different. Born in 1946, and raised in Worthington, southern Minnesota. His father was a veteran soldier in Okinawa and Iwo Jima in World War II and it is believed he was inspired by this to write war stories. O’Brien went to college at Macalester College, Minnesota, to pursue political science. In his college times, he tried to ignore the ongoing Vietnam War and totally opposed it as evident from him attending war protests and peace vigils.

He later graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude and was close to finishing his Ph.D. program at Harvard University’s when he received a letter to go to Vietnam War. O’ Brien at first taught of fleeing, but due to peer pressure of seeing many of his colleagues and townsmen going to war, also went. In the book, The Things they carried, he speaks of his ordeal together with some of his friends. A number of real events at war are difficult to narrate unless you were actually there, and by him trying to look at war from a different angle, also used some characters as first person in the story.

He reasons that it is only fiction that can be used to understand truth. In addition, since no one is perfect in his work, he decided to add the fictitious aspect to add make story more attractive. In conclusion, the main reasons that led to O’ Brien writing the book The Things They Carried are discussed in the above essay and mostly comprise aspects in his personal life. From this wonderful book, one could find out the reason why the writer decided to choose to write his book in a fictitious manner instead of narrating his real ideal.

All in all, this book is good and appealing to the readers and quite a controversial literature of war.