Tim O'Brien's novel "The Things They Carried" is a compilation of vignettes taken from the Vietnam War where young confused soldiers who are emotionally and sometimes physically scarred are fighting a war that they themselves do not fully understand. Tim O'Brien narrates stories that come from his own experiences, and his desire to blur the lines between reality and fiction, between created character and living person, and also to stress how immoral the Vietnam War was. He exposes an incredible amount of credibility without necessarily being reliable. He uses literary strategies like imagery, diction, and especially symbolism that add to his credibility, even though, what he is presenting might not in actuality be something that truly happened or is, but what seemed to happen or seemed to be.

Mary Ann Bell was a girl who was introduced to the Vietnam War by her boyfriend Mark Fossie. She was...