Introduction

//**media type="custom" key="2086791" The Things They Carried**// is a collection of related stories by [|Tim O'Brien], about a platoon of American soldiers in the [|Vietnam War], originally published in 1990. It is a work of fiction that draws some of its power from the tension derived from an uncertainty about whether or not some of the action really happened. The narrator moves from the present day (1990) back to Vietnam in the late 1960s, sometimes telling a story as if there in the moment The story "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" was made into a film in 1998, entitled //A Soldier's Sweetheart// and it starred Keifer Sutherland. The stories were published in magazine form before they were collected into a book. In the short story, "Good Form," the narrator makes a distinction between "story truth" and "happening truth." O'Brien feels that the idea of creating a story that is technically false yet truthfully portrays war, as opposed to just stating the facts and creating no emotion in the reader, is the correct way to clear his conscience and tell the story of thousands of soldiers who were forever silenced by society. Critics often cite this distinction when commenting on O'Brien's artistic aims in //The Things They Carried// and, in general, all of his fiction about Vietnam, claiming that O'Brien feels that the realities of the Vietnam War are best explored in fictional form rather than the presentation of precise facts. O'Brien's fluid and elliptical negotiation of truth in this context finds echoes in works labeled as 'non-fiction novels.' A common theme in the book is that intimacy with death carries with it a corresponding new intimacy with life. //The Things They Carried// was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger. It is widely regarded as the most significant work of fiction to come out of the Vietnam War.