The things they carried...?

Question

I need help understanding this quote from the novel The Things They Carried. i have to write an essay about why Tim O'Brien says "But this too is true: stories can save us", pretty much my professor wants us to kind of criticize the ending of the novel, was it to easy for him to say that after everything he said about stories, the meaning of the last chapter etc. i have some ideas but i dont think they are good enough.. i truly need help with this.

Answer 1

O’Brien’s confession that even though he is forty-three years old he is still making up stories that keep Linda alive reveals that these stories help keep him alive as well. O’Brien’s worldview is one of acceptance and peace in the face of death, of celebrating the dead by remembering them living.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/thingscarr...

O’Brien explains that stories can bring the dead back to life through the act of remembering.

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitN...

Answer 2

He is saying that story-telling can bring about catharsis and heal a heart badly damaged by the horror of war.

This is a great novel and one of the three best about Nam as far as I am concerned, but it is actually a non-fiction novel in part. O'Brien lived this book, these are his memories as well as his imagination at work, so I imagine the story lines blur together sometimes, and writing it, in some of the stories  he sounds like he actually took part , like when his buddy got killed.

. Every story in The Things They Carried describes a lesson  he learned in Nam, this mix of truth and fiction works out to a " because it didn't happen doesn't mean it is any less true" story telling approach and I believe these stories saved him by acting as a catharsis. The many years after the war when he wrote it did not mean he had resolved the issues. I believe recounting these observations about the things they carried is an insight into the things he carried away from Nam. Writing them out allowed him to put them away for good. But his last story tells you that death and the loss of those we love is an ever present threat to our personal status quo, whether its a war buddy or a sweet young girlfriend.The past is with us in our memory,telling and retelling our story till we get it to where we like to remember it whether it is true or not. I think that is what he means by "this too is true."

Here is an excerpt from Wiki that may help you more than I have.

In the short story, "Good Form," the narrator makes a distinction between "story truth" and "happening truth." O'Brien feels that the idea of creating a story that is technically false yet truthfully portrays war, as opposed to just stating the facts and creating no emotion in the reader, is the correct way to clear his conscience and tell the story of thousands of soldiers who were forever silenced by society. Critics often cite this distinction when commenting on O'Brien's artistic aims in The Things They Carried and, in general, all of his fiction about Vietnam, claiming that O'Brien feels that the realities of the Vietnam War are best explored in fictional form rather than the presentation of precise facts. O'Brien's fluid and elliptical negotiation of truth in this context finds echoes in works labeled as 'non-fiction novels.'

A common theme in the book is that intimacy with death carries with it a corresponding new intimacy with life.