The Impact of Stories in The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

For writers, stories can serve as way for them to process trauma from their life and help them and preserve their or their loved ones’ memories and essence by allowing them to take their memories out of their minds and put them on paper ; for readers, stories can make them feel seen and heard when they read about similar experiences they have been in.

Stories can help writers process the trauma they’ve experienced in their life. Tim O’Brien makes up a story in the chapter “Field Trip”, where he goes back to Vietnam with his made-up daughter twenty years after the war had occurred. Throughout the chapter, he and his daughter visit all of the places that O’Brien has seen or been in during his service in Vietnam (O’Brien, 175-179). He is able to process his trauma by seeing the contrast of Vietnam  between the war and when he went back twenty years later; everything was far more peaceful. During one scene, Kathleen calls O’Brien “weird” for coming back to Vietnam and constantly remembering things about the war: “‘You know something? Sometimes you’re pretty weird, aren’t you?’ ‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘You are too….Like coming over here. Some dumb thing happens a long time ago and you can’t ever forget it?’” (O’Brien, 175). Because it is known that Kathleen is not real and O’Brien made up the entire story and conversation, it is evident that the dialogue presented in the story is what O’Brien is thinking to himself. By creating a fictional daughter, he is also able to contrast his dark memories of Vietnam with a new, innocent soul who had never witnessed the horrors of war. He is also able to forget the “dumb thing” that happened decades ago by mentally going back to the place where a lot of his trauma came from and seeing how it is now.

Stories can also help writers leave a legacy, whether it is their own or someone else’s. In “The Lives of the Dead”, which is the last chapter of the book, O’Brien establishes a theme of stories saving people and their essence. He tells the story of his first love, Linda, who had died from a brain tumor when they were both nine years old (223-224). After she dies and he begins dreaming about her, which serves as a way to process his grief, he ends up crying as he truly realizes that Linda was dead. However, the dream version of Linda tells him, “Timmy, stop crying. It doesn’t matter” (225). The reason that it does not really matter that Linda was dead is because O’Brien was still keeping her alive by dreaming about her, and the older version of him was still keeping her alive by writing about her. Her memory and essence would always be alive if people were thinking or reading about her. In another daydream, Linda also states a metaphor which captures the message O’Brien was striving to pass on to the readers: “‘Well, right now,’ she said, ‘I’m not dead. But when I am, it’s like…I don’t know, I guess it’s like being inside a book that nobody’s reading….An old one. It’s up on the library shelf…but the book hasn’t been checked out for a long time. All you can do is wait…’” (232). Linda was not dead when talking to Timmy because he had been dreaming of her and keeping her memory alive. However, when no one is thinking of her and when no one is reading about her, that is when she is truly dead. O’Brien “kept the dead alive with stories” (226), as the people he writes about truly never die as long as someone is reading about them. He then goes on to say the same thing about himself; by writing about his own experiences, he is able to preserve his own essence (233).

Stories can make readers feel seen when they read about experiences similar to their own, making them feel less alone. In the chapter “Notes”, O’Brien’s fellow soldier Norman Bowker writes him a letter that expresses his uncertainties about “finding a meaningful use for his life after the war” (149). By writing the letter, he can do the same thing O’Brien is doing and put his thoughts down on paper to get them out of his mind, as a way to process his memories. In the letter, Bowker states, “It’s almost like I got killed over in Nam…Hard to describe. That night when Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down into the sweage with him…Feels like I’m still in deep sh*t” (150). It is evident that Bowker could not stop thinking about the events of the war, and he is held back by the memories because he has no way to process his trauma, contrary* to O’Brien, who writes stories to get the memories out of his head. It is also mentioned in the chapter before “Notes”, called “Speaking of Courage”; in this story, Bowker is found always circling a lake in his home-town, which symbolizes how his mind had also been going in circles while thinking of the Vietnam War and never being able to break out of that trance. However, in the letter Bowker writes to O’Brien, he suggests that the latter should write about the fecal field in Vietnam (151). He suggests the idea so that he can read about it, which can serve as an outlet for his trauma; seeing his own experience on a paper that was written by someone else can make him feel seen and potentially help him move on with his life. However, when Bowker realized that O’Brien did not write about the fecal field, he wrote O’Brien a final letter, but asked him why he did not include the field (153). Then, O’Brien states that Bowker had hung himself eight months later (154). Without having a shared experience that he can read about and process his trauma in that manner, Bowker is left drowning in his memories of Vietnam, which disturb him so much that it leads to him committing suicide. If Bowker had an outlet to process his emotions and grief, then he most likely would not have killed himself.

Stories, whether they are fictional or real, help people process. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien skillfully demonstrates that when a person writes something down, it becomes real and tangible; when a person reads that story, it becomes impactful.