The Truths They Carried

I hope ev’rybody had a good weekend. I am not really sure how to start this blog, so here goes something. I think this book is very entertaining because each chapter tells a different story about the war. One theme that I noticed was that cowards are the ones who do what is expected of them instead of upholding their own beliefs. For instance in the chapter, On The Rainy River, O’Brien runs away and undergoes inner turmoil when he is drafted into the war and has indecisiveness of whether he should fight or hide. O’Brien says of his decision, " I was a coward. I went to the war (61)."This is ironic to me that he was brave to fight, yet he still calls himself a coward. He feels that it is amoral to fight and kill men in a war without having a clear defined purpose. I think O’Brien is trying to convey that doing what is socially acceptable no matter how chivalrous it may seem is really cowardice if you are not upholding your own moral standards.
Another theme that O’Brien tries to convey is that a true war story does not necessarily have to be true and that some true stories are irrelevant. Stories that are falsified or overexaggerated may have more truth to them than those that are historically accurate. Made up stories may show the real agonizing emotions like the sheer terror that the soldiers endured on a daily basis. The credible stories are simply a time line that tell a soldier’s journey from point A to point B but do not bridge the alienation and judgement between the soldiers and the folks back home. It is the stories invented by the soldiers that give outsiders an inside look at the hardships the soldiers’ have been through.