The things they carried post 2

The Things They Carry  is unlike any other war story I have heard or read before. The last book I have read based completely on the premise of war was Unbroken, which one could easily consider a conventional, run-of-the-mill war story. Unbroken focuses primarily on an Italian American boy named Louis Zamperini. He is taken prisoner after his plane crashes in the Pacific Ocean, and spends the next five years as a POW and the rest of his life trying to recover from the gruesome events he witnessed. While these novels have many differences, there are many aspects the books share. The similarity I find most interesting is what they consider a war story. In The Things They Carry, O'Brian talks about how a true war story makes you feel things in the pit your stomach. The way these two books achieve the affect of becoming a "true" war story is different. Unbroken achieves this by first humanizing and building up Louis as a likable character that the reader can develop emotions for later in the novel when the cruelest acts imaginable begin to happen to him. O'Brian does this in a number of ways; the largest being how he creates personalities for the characters based on those he served with. This adds an affect of forced factor of reality. The Things They Carry and Unbroken can both be considered "true" war stories under O'Brian's belief of what a war story is, because the two novels force the reader to feel gut wrenching emotions in response to the horrible things that happen to the main characters.