I think The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is an excellent work of art. Although the structure and content of the book seem unusual, O’Brien uses them to serve a specific purpose. The Things They Carried takes an unconventional approach to storytelling which reflects a veteran’s memory of war. These memories are often fragmented, and much more down-to-earth than what one might expect from a conventional narrative of war, e.g. a history book. The plot of the book jumps back and forth between the Vietnam War and the present day. The chapter “Speaking of Courage” alternates between scenes from the present (Norman Bowker driving around and around the lake) and from the protagonist’s experience of the war. Rather than directly depicting the war, and it represents the protagonist ruminating over and painfully processing his memories from the war. During the war, his companion Kiowa died in a muddy field amid mortar fire (148-149). At the end of the chapter, Norman Bowker immersed him in the water without undressing. He “opened his lips, very slightly, for the taste, then he stood up and folded his arms and watched the fireworks.” (154) This is a ritualistic parallel to the war scene, referring back to the muddy field that devoured the lives of one soldier after another, both physically and mentally. While unconventional, it sums up the actual emotional experience of war quite powerfully. The content of the novel is also somewhat unusual. The Things They Carried dives deep into the daily experiences of war. Rather than repeating the archetypal heroic stories and unlikely victories that many other stories tell, and that many might expect, The Things They Carried talks about the less dramatic and more mundane moments. An example is the chapter “Stockings”. This chapter is about Henry Dobbins, a soldier, who wraps “his girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck before heading out on ambush” and he believes it was a “good-luck charm” (117). Oddly, it seems to work, as “Dobbins was invulnerable. Never wounded, never a scratch.” (118) This kind of story might seem embarrassing for a returning soldier to tell, but they are integral to profound understanding the psychology of war. To Henry, the stockings represent his homeland, his cherished interpersonal connections and a piece of who he was before the war. Another chapter that makes this clear is “How to Tell a True War Story”. This chapter talks extensively about the writing process itself. Here, O’Brien elucidates many of the properties of the book itself: “a true war story is never moral. It does not instruct nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done.” (68) Although the book may teaches no moral, it is something much closer to a true war story than the other, much more melodramatic, books on war. In a sense, it has the virtue of being honest, and honesty opens the path to true wisdom. Also, The Things They Carried is told from the perspective of a draftee, as opposed to someone who was truly willing to fight, and who aspired to do something heroic. This makes the book more relatable to the average person. It tells the story of the Vietnam War as viewed from the average soldier in the war, whose struggle and trauma makes the reader awaken to the true price of war.