Peace In The Margins

“There was the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry…They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.” 

How does one find the words to review a book – fiction not fiction/memoir not memoir – which has impacted your life beyond words? And that’s something because words do indeed hold power. This is the truth Tim O’Brien drives home in The Things They Carried. Yes, it is a vignette style Vietnam War story compilation, but in it O’Brien declares truth, half-truths, and outright fiction in one of the most unique organizational techniques in literature. 

The tales are presented around the theme of all the “things” a soldier carries – physically, out of necessity, personally, by choice, as well as those items which cannot be weighed, yet feel just as tangible as their rucksacks and helmets. 

“They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” 

At its core, this is a story about the power of stories. A fictional memoir (I know, what is that?) where “Story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” What does that mean? There is always an element of truth in any story told, but a fictional or dramatized version of that story has the ability to evoke emotions that “just the facts, ma’am” find it impossible to convey. I liken it to a fish tale. As the fisherman tells his tale over and over, it is transformed with added embellishments at each retelling until becoming a “true story that never happened,” yet rings more of truth than the truth filled with more emotion at each recollection.

“In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed. When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. The pictures get jumbled, you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.” 

This is true no matter the story you read, even in memoir. It is much like when law enforcement interviews witnesses, each witness will have their own understanding of what transpired. Each statement carrying a different perspective. You see, my version of an event may be experienced differently than your version, thus making my retelling very different – with some potential similarities – than your retelling. What seemed relevant at the time, may seem less relevant after several retellings. 

“And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” 

Stories hold power over our lives, and we ourselves are small individual stories in the grand story of the world.  Our stories are how we remember and how we are remembered. Stories have the power to ressurect and keep people alive.

As long as we pick up a book and read those stories, those characters – noth true and fictional – will never die.  

O’Brien’s tales dig through the muck of my soul and settle in deep reminding me why I love language and stories, why I even pick up a book, and why I continue to plug away at my keyboard. Indeed stories have power, and readers give those stories life. Harsh, gritty, and ever so beautifully written, The Things They Carried will forever remain on my all-time favorites list.

Unsolicited Review. 

Until Next Time,

Alicia