First person Point of view and Omniscient View

First Person- One of the characters tells the story
Omniscient- An omniscient or all knowing narrator tells the sotory, also using the third person pronouns. This narrator instead of focusing on one chacater only, often tells us everything about many characters.
The Things they Carried" is a recolection of stories told by tim O'brian about his time spent fighting in the Vietnam War. He makes himself one of the characters and he tells most of the stories from him own view point. However, in chapters such as Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, Speaking of courage and some of the other chapters, different characters tell a story that they expereinced or an all knowing narrator will tell their stoy. these characters include, Jimmy cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins, and Kiowa.

Begining " The Things They Carried"

I have to say I enjoyed reading this book much more than The Sun Also Rises. I think this is because it was more easily understood and more modern. The themes in this book were universal and these events took place less than fifty years ago. I found two things challenging about this book. One, trying to figure out which stories were true and which one's were symbolic or exaggerated. The author tells us how true war stories are never really true and this is demonstrated through out the book. Two, figuring out what the symbols and metaphors actually meant. This was a challenge since so much of the book was symbolic. never the less I enjoyed this book and learned alot about the Vietnam War.