The Things They Carried written by Tim O'Brien is a well-written work of fiction. In the story O'Brien makes a close association with the physical, psychological and emotional burden that soldiers endured while serving in the Vietnam War. Throughout the story O'Brien examines what it takes to tell a good war story as he uses his own experiences alongside his imagination to weave together a series of stories. He does a phenomenal job of making the reader feel as if they themselves were a soldier serving in the Vietnam War. However, as O'Brien states in the book “A true war story is never moral” (O'Brien 65). The Vietnam War has a different meaning for both young and old. The longest known American war lasted eighteen years. Some would describe the war as an enigma as not everyone was in favor of the war. At the age of 21 Tim O'Brien was drafted for the Vietnam War. He states that The Things They Carried is a way for readers to experience what he felt during the war. The key experiences and emotions he wants the reader to feel are frustration, not being able to find the enemy, soldiers around you losing their lives, and being angry at being in a war that you yourself don't believe in. forty years after the start of the Vietnam War, O'Brien finds himself with a faceless responsibility and pain. He says it best: “You bring the war home with you. The things you brought with you to war are also things you brought home.” The Things They Carried is a novel, and a novel is an art form. The main purpose of any art form is to give people a perspective and vision of reality. O'Brien does a brilliant job using his author technique to make the reader... the center of the paper... the artist and just like any artist O'Brien wants to change your mind. He wants you to see the world as he sees it. This is his intent to make the reader believe that this collection of memories, feelings and actions are actually real and in some parts of the story he makes the reader believe that he himself was once a soldier in the Vietnam War. Life itself is very similar to the way O'Brien describes war. He says: “War is hell, but it is not the half of it, because war is also mystery, terror, adventure, courage, discovery, holiness, pity, desperation, desire and love. War is bad; war is fun. War is hard work. War makes you a man; it kills you” (O'Brien 76). Any well-written novel will intrigue the reader because when an author is able to bend the emotions of a real-life event with a fictional point of view of things, a story has been written.