Lying

      Near the end of The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien reveals a hard truth, "it's time to be blunt. I'm forty-three years old...almost everything else is invented (171)." Stating this simply, he makes the reader question every previous story in the book. Did O'Brien actually drive to Canada? Was there ever a Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong? O'Brien leaves that up to interpretation-- but he makes the argument that it's inconsequential to the meaning of the story. He writes, "what stories can do, I guess, is make things present (172)." O'Brien argues that it doesn't matter if he actually drove to Canada because the important aspect of the story -- his feeling of helplessness and indecision -- are portrayed. O'Brien, I think, would argue that it doesn't matter what the plot of a story is, as long as it makes the reader feel. Helplessness and indecision can exist in many forms, and to an extent one could make the argument that life revolve around situations and our emotional responses to them. Life is about experiences. That, O'Brien says, is truthful.

      There may not have been a Sweetheart, but the loss of innocence by the men was something palpable, that every reader could understand. The reader may have never been to war, but they've experienced the loss of innocence. In Sweetheart O'Brien writes, "he (Rat Kiley) wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt (85)." 

      In the end, it's not about the story truth, but about a truth that makes the reader feel the pain and joy and anger the soldiers felt over in Vietnam. By revealing that a large portion of the book is factually incorrect, O'Brien urges us to look deeper than the story being told. That war, and life, isn't about events that happen, but about the feelings and experiences those events incur.