O'Brien’s specific stories are dispersed amongst the entirety of the “novel,” briefly mentioning the death of Rat Kiley’s soulmate in the beginning and then later explaining in full detail, different views and experiences from his death. The tendency to spread-out the tale of Curt Lemon calls for the reader “to piece together information, such as the circumstances surrounding the characters' deaths, in the same manner that the characters must piece together the reality of the war, or, for that matter, Curt Lemon's body” (Calloway). Calloway parallels the structure of The Things They Carried with the stories of his characters, forcing the reader to focus on the individuality of the soldiers to find truth, “O'Brien's truth is always individual; it lies in the idiosyncrasies of individuals”
O'Brien’s specific stories are dispersed amongst the entirety of the “novel,” briefly mentioning the death of Rat Kiley’s soulmate in the beginning and then later explaining in full detail, different views and experiences from his death. The tendency to spread-out the tale of Curt Lemon calls for the reader “to piece together information, such as the circumstances surrounding the characters' deaths, in the same manner that the characters must piece together the reality of the war, or, for that matter, Curt Lemon's body” (Calloway). Calloway parallels the structure of The Things They Carried with the stories of his characters, forcing the reader to focus on the individuality of the soldiers to find truth, “O'Brien's truth is always individual; it lies in the idiosyncrasies of individuals”