The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien (1990)
“A Vietnam veteran blurs autobiography and fiction to ask the only question that matters: what is a war story really for?”
Character Analysis
O'Brien the character is not O'Brien the author — the book says so explicitly and then blurs the line anyway. As a character, he is a soldier who went to Vietnam when he believed he shouldn't have, killed a man he feels responsible for, survived when others didn't, and has spent two decades writing about it. His intelligence and self-awareness are both his greatest strength (he can articulate what others can't) and his greatest burden (he can never stop analyzing what he did).
Educated, literary, self-aware — references Hemingway, Fitzgerald, narrative theory. Harvard-bound before the draft. His language is precise and literary even when describing the most brutal events.