FREE ESSAY ON THE TRUTH IS

THE TRUTH IS

The Truth Is...
The Things They Carried is a thoroughly gripping book with a raw honesty that is
absolutely haunting. Aside from the Bible, no book has affected me so deeply. I was not
there in the jungles of Vietnam. I was not even alive when the fighting occurred. There
are only a few people I know who fought in those far away jungles and rarely do they
speak of it. Then I met Tim O'Brien. I met him walking through the jungle, pondering
Canada, visiting his boyhood home, and remembering his dreams. He told me the truth about
Vietnam.
He told me the truth but he took twists and turns in his story. He leapt backward and
seemed to be going nowhere, but that is just when he would hit me hard and fast with his
point. I wondered why he was telling me like this, and then I realized that is was the
only way for me to understand. Mere words could take me to the jungle, but it was the
dizzying truth that would make me feel the heat and confusion. He made sure I knew, that
in war, "There is no clarity. Every thing swirls." (88). It was the nature of his
memory.
I learned about the tangible things that the men carried into and through the jungle.
They carried pictures, love letters, steel helmets, and M-16's. There were other things
though, things they didn't always pull out and show the other guys. Fear was tucked away
somewhere behind their eyes and innocence was carried in but quickly stolen away. The war
robbed them of their peaceful sleep and guiltlessness and gave vivid memory in their
place. They'll never forget the surreal images that make up their memories of Vietnam. 
That is what Tim O'Brien and the men of his company carried out of Vietnam. They carried
things heavier and more profound than what they came in with. Things like haunting
memories and guilt, the look on a friends face just before he was blown to pieces when he
stepped on a land mine and shaking dead men's hands. In the blurred morality that
enveloped Vietnam, these men were forced to kill without hate, without even thinking
about killing (148). That is what the war gave these men to carry out and take home;
images of death burned in their memory. O'Brien told me that, "Even now I haven't
finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don't." (149). 
He didn't ask me to understand the war because it cannot be understood. Instead he asked
me to understand the men. I knew that was impossible; I hadn't seen it, done it, tasted
it...you had to be there. I could sense that he did not want me to say that I understood;
he knew I didn't. Not fully, the way he did. He just wanted me to listen and hear him
remember the truth. He told me the stories over and over again to make sure I got it. The
truth, the nature of his memory will now be one of the things that I carry.