1. Metafiction and Tim O’Brien
To get at a higher, nobler truth, I tell a big lie. That's what almost all fiction is. Huckleberry Finn is a noble lie. Macbeth is as well. Fiction for me is going beneath the transient surface of events that occur in life and reaching for more personal (and at the same time more eternal) truths. They're the truths of the human heart that don't have expression all the time in the real world. My terror of that summer existed inside of me. And it was very real. ~Tim O'Brien

2. What exactly is metafiction?
A piece of literature, like The Things They Carried, that acknowledges itself as a piece of fiction in order to question the difference between fiction and reality.
A piece of literature that is FICTION, but provides truths of reality that always apparent in reality.
Movie Examples: Forrest Gump, Rocky, Rudy (to an extent), The Princess Bride (book)

3. A piece of literature is most likely metafiction if…
History told by characters is no longer understandable; reality is blurred
The author is a part of the story (like O’Brien in The Things They Carried)
A mixing of historical figures and fiction characters or events- Forrest Gump

4. Metafiction in The Things They Carried
What characters did O’Brien actually know?
What events actually happened in the book?
If something did not happen in the book, is there still a truth in it?
DOES IT REALLY MATTER?