Tim O'Brien

O'Brien experienced the war when he was called to fight in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970. He and his unit saw untold horrors, but moments of beauty and peace that seem incompatible with the landscape of cruelty and fear as well. O'Brien calls his novel an artwork, but it’s based on the experience of thousands of people, who are forced to fight for their country in the mud and jungles of a part of the world that is far from their own.

O'Brien captures his cumulative experience in a series of vignettes, blurring the lines between what is happening, that is the truth and the story along the way. For readers, who have seen the complexities of war, O'Brien's novel tells them the truth of fight. For readers, who have never encountered war, his stories may seem confusing. However, they are among the most reliable works, that we have ever met. O'Brien talks about strength, hope, despair and agrees with the choices he and other people had to make. Some of the main topics are related to new skills, including guilt, the relationship between history and truth, the hardships that we all bear, and acceptance.

He symbolizes that war is a thing, which blurs the line between truth and surrealism; what happens in a war, it looks like it can never be real, but it happens at the same time. Many returning soldiers feel alienated from their homes and families because no one can truly understand what they have seen or experienced.

The first chapter of the novel is devoted to the physical and emotional burdens that people carried with them during their walking: guns, equipment, photographs, letters, hope, fear, memories and guilt. Some of these things create a physical burden that needs to be transferred. For some men, the emotional burden weighs more than the equipment.