SOURCE: O'Gorman, Farrell. “The Things They Carried as Composite Novel.” WLA: War, Literature & the Arts 10, no. 2 (fall-winter 1998): 289-309.

In the following essay, O'Gorman examines The Things They Carried as a composite novel.

I feel I'm experimenting all the time. But the difference is this: I am experimenting not for the joy of experimenting, but rather to explore meaning and themes and dramatic discovery … I don't enjoy tinkering for the joy of tinkering, and I don't like reading books merely for their artifice. I want to see things and explore moral issues when I read, not get hit over the head by the tools of the trade.

(Anything Can Happen 269)

Novels have a kind of continuity of plot or of narrative which this book does not have. But it would be unfair for me to say that it's a collection of stories; clearly all of the stories are related...