The question of whether or not Tim O'Brien's “The Things They Carried” conforms to the conventions of the memoir genre memoir is a complex issue simply because it is a novel that deliberately blurs the lines between fact and fiction. The stories are based on real events, but hide behind the façade of fiction, which gives rise to a phenomenon known as narrative truth. This makes the novel feel like a memoir. Tim O'Brien paradoxically challenges both the conventions of a memoir and a novel, but in this essay the main focus will be on how he challenges the typical characteristics of the memoir genre. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The episodes, classified as novels in the paperback edition, chronicle the experiences of a platoon in Vietnam, sharing their emotions, their dark moments of humor and their flaws. It is structured as a series of stories interspersed together by the same characters, each story developing the experiences of each soldier. O'Brien's stories move back and forth in time, creating a memoir-like feel. This is also a tool that O'Brien uses to arrive at different kinds of truths by presenting experiences in different ways. Such an informal structure is often prevalent in memoirs. Arguably the most notable convention of a memoir – telling the story in the first person – can be found in “The Things They Carried.” For example, "On the Rainy River," a short story about Tim O'Brien who goes to Canada with the intention of escaping the draft, is told in the first person by a character named after the author. This perpetuates the confusion between fiction and truth as it gives the text an autobiographical character, but the story is paradoxically classified as fictional from the beginning. By breaking down the events described in the novel, O'Brien has given himself free rein to explore his feelings and personal truths rather than what really happened: he is able to distinguish between what really happened during the Vietnam War and what seemed to happen from his eyes. own perspective. Despite the fact that the author and the narrator seem similar, the narrator relentlessly tries to question the veracity of the stories he has told both from his memory and from rumors. For example, in “The Man I Killed,” the character O'Brien begins to imagine a life eerily similar to his own for the soldier he killed: “the young man would not have wanted to be a soldier and in his heart he would have feared behaving badly in battle” (p. 133). This search for the truth on his part leads readers to follow a similar path. For example, when O'Brien describes the fear and shock he felt after killing another soldier, he leads readers to believe him. However, he then questions the soldier's mere existence, once again trying to undermine the veracity of the stories. The motivation behind such suspicious contradictions is to emphasize the insignificance of factual truth and to highlight what, for O'Brien, is actually important: the act of telling. Another common feature of memoirs is that readers are often not told how the stories are told. the author had feelings for whatever event happened. Instead, they are shown through both dialogue and the actions of the characters. This convention is prevalent in “The Things They Carried,” highlighted in the story “Style” in which Azar “made fun of the girl's dancing. He did some fun jumps and spins. He placed his palms against his ears and danced sideways for a.”.