(Gottlieb).
If I Die in a Combat Zone is written with great pain and passion. The book was mostly a reflection on one man's experiences. This would be classified as a narration. O"Brien narrates his experience of being a foot soldier. In doing so, he is able to give his clear honest opinion of the things he was seeing, and forced to do. It also shows in many ways an unreal war. The book is impressive and convincing both because it shows what war is like and because it concentrates on one individual tested with his own human frailty and courage, trying to survive the fighting with some kind of integrity. (Waters 271).
O"Brien recalls the wreckage that was all around. Wreckage was the rule and brutality was standard operating procedure. There were scalded children, pistol-whipped women, burning hooches, free-fire zones, body counts, and constant bombing and harassment fire (Hillstrom 125). The war had a great effect on Tim O"Brien's life. His writing is a way for him to cope with the feelings he had after the war. O"Brien wrote If I Die in a Combat Zone in 1973, his first book about the war. O"Brien writes with the consciousness of a young graduate. That may be the reason why it seemed to lack a plot. In any instances though his youthful earnest never turned into self-pity (Glover 271).
O"Brien faces human frailty, courage, and fear. He is also not afraid to tell the truth. In order to depict the war he could not spare the details that he didn't want people to know. If I Die in a Combat Zone gives an honest opinion of a soldier who is against the war, and shows the struggle to hang on to life and mind (Gottlib).
In If I Die in Combat Zone O"Brien focuses on the human frailty, courage, and fear of fighting a war. The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O"Brien deals with those same feelings. In The Things They Carried O"Brien uses fiction to capture the war's rhythms and nerve-racking dangers.