The Things They Carried, a novel by Tim O’Brien, is a collection of war stories told from a fictional Vietnam veteran’s perspective. O’Brien elucidates the physical and emotional barrier war creates between men and women to help demonstrate the frustration soldiers have with women in war.…
The Things They Carried” is a short story written by Tim O'Brien in 1990. This story is about several young American soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. The main focus of O'Brien's story was the burdens that the soldiers each carried individually. The soldiers did not just carry tangible burdens like weapons, gear, and other essentials. The greatest burdens the platoon had to carry throughout the war, were the ones that they struggled with internally. Not only were these burdens heavy, but they could ultimately cost the soldiers their lives.…
The Vietnam War was a war of great ambiguity. Flowered up with the illusive ideas of heroism and triumph, millions of America's innocent youth were drafted to fight a war in Vietnam. The consequences for this war were grave and dire. Millions from both sides lost their lives for a seemingly unreasonable cause. In his novel "The Things They Carried", Tim O'Brien changes the glorified way in which media and textbooks portray war, telling gruesome stories illustrating the irreparable damage war inflicts on the lives of young soldiers. The "things" the characters carry both concrete and emotional. Woefully, the ladder catapults the men into a lifetime of struggling to cope with the crushing weight of guilt, grief, and haunting memories that cannot be unloaded.…
In the book titled, The Things They Carried, the author, Tim O ' Brien, depicts a world where traumatic memories and crushing emotional baggage are far heavier than any combat pack or assortment of weapons that has ever burdened the back of a soldier. The author, O 'Brien, explores the physical and emotional burdens that the soldiers of the Vietnam War "hump" or carry with them. The author portrays the things the soldiers carry throughout the story as both literally tangible items and figuratively intangible burdens. The reader is able to learn a great deal about the soldiers and their character by analyzing the things they carry during war. However, the story is not so much about the physical things the men of Alpha Company carry, but rather…
Literature Summary: “The Things They Carried”, published in 1990 tells a true story of Tim O’Brian, author and main character, who is drafted for the Vietnam war. He tells about the different items that him and his fellow soldiers carried with them to help cope with the traumatic environment that they were placed in.…
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a semi-autobiographical novel based on O’Brien’s experience in the Vietnam War. In the book, O’brien tells about the events leading up to him being drafted, war stories, and some narratives about his comrades. He says that he did not join the war because of morals, but because he was scared not to. Throughout the book, the characters have been coping with death/mortality, social obligations/pressures, guilt/shame, and moral conflicts. O’Brien shares his thoughts on what makes a “true war story” which is very interesting. Overall, O’Brien induces thought and feeling through the interesting medium of stories and language.…
The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, recounts the horrible experiences of soldiers at war in Vietnam. Throughout the novel, the author not only tells war stories, but tales about his own life, often referencing and dwelling on those who have made an impact on his life. He stresses the importance of these people and stories, often referring to them as “war stories” although many of these are not true. They serve as an outlet for O’Brien, allowing him to let go of these horrible memories but also letting him keep the importance that they had on his life. These stories and messages are emphasized through the symbols displayed in the novel, the imagery used throughout, and the anecdotes that recount his memories.…
The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a book about the Vietnam War. In this novel O’Brien takes a main focus on the emotional and physical weight that the soldiers carry. In the beginning of the story O’Brien focuses on the physical components of what the soldiers carry, along with the sentimental value of the things they carry. Such as Jimmy Cross carrying the pictures of Martha, pebbles from Martha, and Henry Dobbins carrying his girlfriend’s panty hose around his neck. Toward the middle of the novel Tim O’Brien mentions the emotional toll that killing other soldiers has on the soldiers. He tells us the thoughts that go through the soldiers heads and how each death impacts them the most. He also talks about the questions that the soldiers have after they kill another soldier, such as, what life they live back home. By the end of…
In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, many negatives of being a soldier are presented. These negatives, being shown as emotional burdens, are prevalent throughout each character in The Things They Carried. More intensely shown is Norman Bowker. He carried strong burdens throughout the story as well as the end of it. The social aspect of the Vietnam War affected the soldiers in The Things They Carried by forcing them to get involved with illegal drugs, and find themselves stuck with emotional burdens of depression and PTSD.…
In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien shares some of his chilling experiences in the Vietnam War using a rather unconventional form. He writes war stories and most of the ones in this…
In the novel “The Things They Carried” written by Tim O’Brien, he discusses the weapons and equipment’s that each American soldier carried during the Vietnam War. The things that the soldiers carried with them are both tangible and intangible. What these items are depends upon each of the soldiers. They carried the basic necessities in order for survival and the bare minimum to make life as livable as possible. However, they also carried with them fear and memories. It is the intangible items like these that are the primary focus of O’Brien’s novel. He provides the audience with images of both physical and mental items the characters carried. The items they carried were the things that everyone carried to survive, the personal things that individuals chose to carry, or the mental burdens that many carried without a choice. The weight of theses intangible items is as cumbersome as that of any physical ones, and unlike the tangible objects, they are extremely difficult to get rid of.…
In the book, The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien, the challenges faced by war are explained in the form of stories. The effects that war can have on a soldier in Vietnam are not solely limited to the physical state, but also the mental state, as is shown when O’Brien introduces the character Mary Anne Bell in chapter nine. The corruption that war brought to an individual’s life led to an altered view of morality and Innocence, as well as the desensitization of an individual.…
He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole. This quotation, from “The Man I Killed,” describes the corpse of a young Vietnamese soldier whom O’Brien killed with a grenade. Many Americans during the war experienced a lot of the same horrific moments. Which they would later have to cope with during and after the war. This would later be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The drive of this piece is to show the effect of the deaths of those considered to be the “enemy ‘on those involved in the war. War is not indiscriminate hate but indiscriminate killing and O ‘Brien condemns these violent acts through their words.…
Throughout his novel, the things The Carried, author Tim O’Brien uses a plethora of strategies to give the reader a deeper incite into the day to day life of an American ground soldier during the Vietnam War. O’ Brian shares with us his extensive knowledge and first hand experiences throughout the novel. Being a veteran of the Vietnam War helps O ‘Brian gives us a look into American’s longest war, not often given. Aside from recalling past events, he uses many unique techniques that we may be less used to. The first is the use of characters and objects as representations. This is one of the tactics most often used in the book. Another way that O ‘Brian uses rliterature to emphasize a point is the use of meta-fiction. This is basically telling the truth in a lie. Lastly, his knowledge and experiences add another dimension to this book that can really engage the reader. All of these components working together are what has mad the Things They Carried, such a critically acclaimed book.…
In many respects, Tim O 'Brien 's The Things They Carried concerns the relationship between fiction and the narrator. In this novel, O 'Brien himself is the main character--he is a Vietnam veteran recounting his experiences during the war, as well as a writer who is examining the mechanics behind writing stories. These two aspects of the novel are juxtaposed to produce a work of literature that comments not only upon the war, but also upon the actual art of fiction: the means of storytelling, the purposes behind them, and ultimately the relationship between fiction and reality itself.…