History has shaped every country and its people, especially negative experiences such as the Holocaust in Nazi Germany or the Vietnam War, which involved the United United in a grueling controversy from 1964 to 1975. Author Tim O'Brian confronts the American public in his stories "The Things They Carried" with the inhuman consequences of political and military power decisions by rewriting history from a point of view subjective and individual. It thus forces the public to take a stand, to ask questions, to get involved morally and ethically. The narrative structure of "The Sweet Heart of the Song Tra Bong" and "How to Tell a True War Story" has two levels, the first being a discourse on the characters of Vietnam stories. The “I,” the narrator, presents “Rat” Kiley as the source for the narrative that follows. He describes stories about the war as "strange", "swirling back and forth across the line between banality and bedlam, the mad and the banal". Stories have a life of their own, reality is not absolute, it is not definitive. With this image he describes the ambiguity of the war itself, the normality that turns into madness, he summarizes the narrative of Mary Ann Bell and her experiences with the war. The narrator clearly states the purpose of these stories, is not interested in factual truths about the war, openly questions the reliability of his source: "Rat had a reputation for exaggeration and exaggeration." He wants the audience to "feel exactly what he felt", an emotional experience, a subjective approach. The second narrative level tells the story of Mary Ann Bell, the "sweetheart of the song Tra Bong". The narrator, probably the author, tells Rat's story in his own words, so that the... center of the paper... both positive and negative. But how to do it, how to face history personally and politically? Author Tim O'Brian gives us an answer in "How to Tell a Real War Story" on page 69: "You can tell a real war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care about obscenity, you don't care worry about the truth; you don't care about the truth, be careful how you vote. Send the boys to war, they come home talking dirty." In other words, if you don't want war, be careful how you vote. The connotation of this statement is far-reaching, it naturally places responsibility on the American government for participating in the war, but above all it calls on the American public to take responsibility and use this story, this history to create a better future. Cited: O'Brien, Tim. The things they carried. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1990.