Book Review of "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien

I think that Tim O'Brien is an amazing writer that uses his memories of being in the war as a way to inform people of the things that soldiers go through in war and how it can affect them. It shows the cohesive mentality of a soldier and how it keeps them alive and how it helps the soldiers form a special bond of brotherhood. I believe that his objective for this book was to teach people about the art of a good story and good storytelling. He tells us that not all stories are true and that every good story has some lying in it that makes it a more interesting and compelling. I thought that I was able to easily picture what was happening in the story because of the complexity of his stories and the emotion that he showed in each one. He consistently uses other parts of the book to help you piece the stories together so that you can easily understand the story if you feel like there are missing pieces to it and I thought that it suitably helped the book. In my opinion his usage of precise actions and emotions of the soldiers in the story really enhanced how I felt while reading it because it gave me a clear image of what was going on and in some stories I felt their strong emotions. You are able to feel the pain, the guilt, and the hardships that each of the soldiers went through. In the story "On The Rainy River" you read about the struggle that Tim O'Brien went through deciding whether he should go fight in the war or not and in my opinion it was one of the best stories in the book. What's great about the book is that each story takes you on a different journey with the soldiers of the Vietnam War.

I think that this book is a great first hand view of the Vietnam War in the eyes of the soldiers who fought in it. In the beginning of the story I learned about the things they would be carrying while they humped across jungles and villages. Each person had a certain discipline and were in charge of that specific thing to help the group if they were attacked. What they carried was based on what they were in charge of in the group of men they were assigned to. In many of the stories you can anticipate what the ending is going to be and what the person could have done to impede the outcome. I thought that some of the stories were relevant to my life because they talked about trusting people and how the decisions you make can form the rest of your life. I think this book addresses people who are looking for a good war story or looking for information on how being in war situations are like from a first hand opinion. I would definitely recommend this book to someone who is looking for a good read. This is definitely a book I will read again if I am looking for a good story when I have free time.