Genre theorist David Chandler quotes contemporary literary theorist Gledhill who says that, “Some of those who write within a genre work in creative ‘tension’ with the conventions.” Perhaps no work of fiction better illustrates this concept than Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, in which the author defies the expectations of the war story genre in order to examine the value of fiction. O’Brien rebels against expectations such as violence and glory.

Most works within the war story genre include violent scenes that captivate attention. O’Brien’s prose does include gore, such as the young Asian soldier in “I Killed a Man” whom he describes by saying, “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole…” While this description creates a gruesome image, O’Brien does not provide battle scenes because he is more concerned with their impact. While O’Brien examines the dead man, he imagines what the man’s life may have been like, creating a picture of the man as a scholar who, like O’Brien, did not want to be involved in a war. O’Brien desensitizes himself to his guilt by focusing on details. Traditional war stories, such as Saving Private Ryan, which opens with a monumental battle scene as Normandy Beach is stormed, use violence as a form of entertainment. In fact, O’Brien shows a side of war that isn’t all that exciting. In “Spin” he uses diction such as “monotony,” “vacant,” and “boredom,” words not typically associated with war. O’Brien maintains readers’ attention not because they are on the edge of their seat wondering what action will happen next, but wondering the next level O’Brien will go to in stripping the genre.

Violence and action within the war story genre operate to give a sense of glory and valor. Soldiers are depicted as brave, but O’Brien does not willingly march into battle because he feels a sense of duty to his country. In fact, he nearly evades the draft by going to Canada. In a war story true to its genre, O’Brien would have stepped up to duty, but as he describes his thought process in “On The Rainy River”, “I would go to the war. I would kill and maybe die because I was embarrassed not to.”

O’Brien’s intentions lie in demonstrating the power of fiction, and he dismantles war story conventions in order to show that “story-truth is sometimes truer than happening-truth,” as he explains in “Good Form.” O’Brien reveals that he did not actually carry out the killing of the dead Asian man but is implicated in guilt by mere presence. O’Brien regards facts as irrelevant. He believes that a story is true as long as the feeling that it evokes is true. He operates within the dismantling of the war story genre because it is a framework universal to most readers. All major countries have experienced wars. Many people are familiar with their grandfathers’ telling war stories. How can a survivor of war, perpetrator of crimes against human nature, ever live with themselves? They use the same mechanism O’Brien used in the face of a dead man with a “star shaped hole” for an eye. Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Fiction reveals truth reality obscures,” and O’Brien readers will probably agree that this is the central message behind The Things They Carried.