Tim O'Brien is a well-known author who once said, “I didn't start writing to make money or get famous or anything like that. I became passionate about touching hearts…” He didn't become a writer for fame or money, but to enrich the lives of others through his story. In particular, in his short story collection, "The Things They Carried," O'Brien chronicles the Vietnam War by focusing each story on various soldiers and the events of the war at the time. However, even though it is a collection of short stories, it is not a story with a beginning and an end, but rather a story. It's perhaps the closest thing to listening to a soldier narrator over a long period of time. Additionally, through his work, “The Things They Carried,” O'Brien reveals to the reader the importance of storytelling and shares how accurately passing on stories to the next generation may be inconsistent, but it is still vital to preserve the memories of the living past. In "The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien tells stories of war, love, and goodwill, but he also tells the reader the stories of other soldiers who sit down to tell stories. O'Brien, being a writer, uses stories to process memories, and his memories are of war. This plays a crucial role in his belief about how to tell a true war story: stories are based on memory, not facts. Therefore, since his stories are his way of processing memories of the war, we can assume that they are also the soldiers' method of processing what they are going through. Stories can bring dead people back to life, if only for an hour or so, and they can also reflect the horror and beauty of all that men go through on a daily basis while at the front. And for......middle of paper......the can't bring people back to life, but they are a way to preserve their memory. Rat's act of telling a story brings Curt Lemon back, if only for a little while. Those who hear the story have the feeling that Curt Lemon is alive again. In this collection of stories, when something feels truer than the methodical truth of what happened, it is more memorable. In the end, a true war story is only as true as the untrained mind can understand it. War is not a topic that anyone who has not experienced it can understand. However, Tim O'Brien highlights the importance of telling war stories, and stories in general, to keep memories of the past alive. Although the soldiers died fighting, their memory lives on every time a story is told about their being. If it weren't for stories, there would be no entertainment but, more importantly, no way to preserve the past.