The Things They Carried, Chapters 6-10

How do we know that when a person tells a story, that they are telling the truth? Sometimes, it’s instinct, and sometimes we just take their word for their credibility. Never, though, are we 100% certain that everything that they say is factual.

In the next few chapters of The Things They Carried, O’Brien brings to the attention of the readers that “a true war story is never moral” and is never completely factual. Emotions get wrapped up in the story tellers mind and they seem to confuse “what happened from what seemed to happen.” Throughout these chapters, O’Brien recites numerous war stories, but it is left up to the discretion of the reader to interpret whether the story is factual of not.

One story that was rehashed in these chapters was how Mark Fossie flew his girlfriend Mary Anne, “fresh out of Cleveland Heights Senior High” to Vietnam to stay with him for a few weeks. Although she was young, Mary Anne quickly grew accustomed to the lifestyles that these men lived. Mary Anne was “no timid child” and “curious about things.” She did everything the men did, and wanted to learn all she could about the Vietnamese way of life, and the jobs that the soldiers had over there. While on duty with her boyfriend, Mary Anne learned how to “disassemble an M-16” and “how to cook rice over a can of Sterno and eat with her hands.” Soon enough, Mary is sent back home, but soon returns without telling Mark, and she is residing with the greenies. One night, Mark finds her, and she is wearing a necklace of human tongues that look like “blackened leather.” The imagery of the “blackened leather” compared to “curious about things” shows how war changes people. Being exposed to war transformed Mary Anne into being a malicious human who doesn’t care about others feeling. O’Brien uses this story to show just how drastic war can be on the human mind, and the kind of transformations that can take place emotionally in people.

Either fact or fiction, the stories told by soldiers who have been affected by the war, put into perspective the tremendous changes that take place in soldiers lives, both lives physically and emotionally. These stories help the readers have a better understanding of just what it was like to fight in a war, and help us to sympathize more deeply with war veterans.