War Stories

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses two short stories that deal with the war. The paper explains that "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien was not written to glorify the war or the soldiers, but to express a personal account of what happened. The story, "Guests of the Nation" by Frank O'Connor is reviewed and is shown to be about how the narrator is changed by something he experiences during war.

From the Paper:

"Tim O'Brien's short story, "The Things They Carried" touched me with its honesty. This story was not written to glorify the war nor the soldiers who fought there but to express a personal account of what happened there. The people are ordinary and they are real. We know that they are afraid and we also know that they feel as though they must be courageous somehow. We know that the soldiers felt a lack of direction, which added to their anxiety. I did not get the impression that the writer was trying to impress me with anything he was saying. Rather, he wanted me to understand what kind of hell it was and how these people had to try and cope with this war in a foreign land. The narrator's point of view is powerful because it made me feel as though he was speaking directly to me. The emphasis was not on the physical destruction that the narrator saw but the psychological destruction."

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