Written by Brie
February 8th, 2010

The Things They Carried

This is a book that all aspiring writers should read, focusing on the importance of story to the world. It also sheds some light as to the ways writers can take what they know, transform it into fiction, but still leave the gravity of truth embedded in it.

No, it was not a war he agreed with, not a war he wanted to be a part of, but he was also able to make me see the reality of being too afraid to *not* go to war when drafted. I could see how this boy had very few other options available to him, makes me grieve all the more for those soldiers who get sent to war without a true choice in the matter, without a true desire to help fight the battles the governments have said are vital to our well-being.

The lyrical beauty of O’Brien’s prose made me cherish the images of war in ways that I would never have thought possible, while at the same time, making me a more solid hippie. As he describes the scene of a young man, “one eye closed, one eye a star shaped hole,” I was taken to the path, taken into the head of the soldiers dealing with this image, taken into the grit that can both scar and create a new man. Being exposed to the brutality of death, the coping mechanisms employed in order to deal with that death and gore, I am grateful that I will likely never have to become one of the soldiers for whom this is personal history.

Posted in Books
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.