In this interview with Tim O’Brien, he speaks about the differentiation between but also the blending of fiction and nonfiction. To him (and I think what he wants his readers to feel this as well) the fiction is real. When I first read the book, I felt pretty confident that these were real experiences, which appears to be O’Brien’s intention for his audience. Nearly all of the characters had their names on the dedication page, something O’Brien touched on in the interview, and that’s definitely one of the main reasons I thought the book was an actual recount of his war experiences…But isn’t it?

It’s kind of confusing to think about, for me at least. In one of the chapters of The Things They Carried,  he wrote about that in his other stories he changed Norman Bowker’s name, but in this story he left it as his real name, but was that chapter true or just another piece of fiction that he used to sell the story? I really can’t tell what’s real, real-ish, or fake in this book, but that’s not to say it loses all of its meaning. I think knowing that O’Brien made up these characters with intricate personalities, either means that he based them off of real people he knew in the war (real-ish) or he just created them to get his message across (fake). Either way, it’s clear that a lot of thought went into writing this book, which makes it clear that O’Brien really wants us to know this story and treat the message as nonfiction.