Theme of Truth in "The Things They Carried"

Truth is a ubiquitous theme throughout The Things They Carried. Because of the amount of stories that are told throughout the novel, the idea of whether these stories are true or not is present on the minds of readers. Whoever is telling the story, whether it is O'Brien himself or one of the soldiers in Vietnam, they almost always mention the fact that what they're saying may not have actually happened. Tim O'Brien explains to us why he tells the stories as he does and doesn't always include the truth in the short story "Good Form". He states, "I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth" (pg.178). O'Brien has a point. It is scientifically proven that our emotions and our perspective can change how we view an event happening. So it makes sense that O'Brien recalls the stories as he remembers them, including the emotions and unique perspective. It's probably close to impossible for him to remember what exactly happened in a war when you're fighting for your life. So O'Brien tells us the stories from his perspective and hopes that we understand, as readers, that what he's telling us may not be true. So although the author explicitly informs us that he's lying to our faces, I don't feel cheated. Yes, I would like to know what actually happened in some of those stories and what legitimately happened, but we can never know that. We can only know the stories from O'Brien's perspective. So although the events that occurred in The Things They Carried may not be true, the experiences that the soldiers endured were.