“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a short story in which he talks about his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam. The idea it gives you of why the story is named like that is quite literal. O’Brien talks mainly about what they carried and brought home after the war like their ‘post traumatic stress disorder’, all the memories of guilt and fear, and some other physical objects like matches, morphines, rifles, and candy. For example, when Tim O’Brien goes on telling two stories, “The Man I Killed” and “Ambush”he talks about the guilt he now carries after killing a man. He goes on imagining the life that this victim had form childhood to how his life would’ve been if O’Brien would’t have killed him with a grenade.…
War! Seems like every where we turn anymore you hear a story about war. The story of “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien takes place during the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien narrated the story, and is writing from first hand experiences. This story gives you a good insight of how soldiers think during such difficult times. Throughout this story you’ll see how love can affect a person’s judgment even during a war.…
In this book the author Tim O' Brien uses many different little stories to sum of the big picture of war. He focuses in on many different characters, stories, and their specific feelings to help the reader get an actual feel of what he felt. Which he states on pg. 171 " I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer than happening-truth". While O' Briens main connection to the title focus's in on what each soldier physically carried, deeper than that is the soldiers own feelings, doubts, and fears.…
As the character Tim O’Brien describes his frustration with an old woman for not understanding his war story, the author writes,“I’ll picture Rat Kiley’s face, his grief, and I’ll think, You dumb cooze. Because she wasn’t listening. It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story” (O’Brien 81). The old woman does not understand the purpose of the baby buffalo story. She thinks it supposed to convey a feeling of sadness and pity for the buffalo, but O’Brien makes clear that its purpose is to demonstrate Rat Kiley’s love for Curt Lemon. The woman cannot understand the real truth of the baby buffalo story because she did not experience the war. Only a soldier could relate to the feeling of losing a comrade, and the old woman does not understand that the men felt for Rat Kiley more than for the buffalo. A soldier or veteran can try his best to tell a story that emotes the truth of an event or sequence of events, but sometimes only another soldier can comprehend the true meaning of a story. After Curt Lemon’s death, Rat Kiley writes a letter to Lemon’s sister, and O’Brien summarizes what Kiley…
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 Things They Carried is a memoir of twenty-two stories about the author, Tim O'Brien and his half truth memories of his time as a soldier in the Vietnam War. O'Brien admits in the novel often blurring the line between the real story and the absurd fallacy the names of the characters in the book are those of his comrades the entire collect serves as a self-contained work because it is so loyal to its themes and characters.…
Tim O'Brien, in his short story “The Things They Carried,” writes about what soldiers in Vietnam carried, literally and figuratively. He discusses what they “humped,” the tangible things and the intangible ones too. For example, all the men carried flak jackets which had a real defined weight but also they carried fear and “all the emotional baggage of men who might die” (21). We can touch the flak jacket but not the fear or Jimmy Cross' love for Martha.…
The title of Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, paints a vague mental image of people carrying something – an image that is not yet complete for the reader to grasp the purpose of the novel. ‘Things’ are often assumed to be physical, in this novel, the ‘things’ that the soldiers carried were the mental burdens during and after the Vietnam War. Through the use of narratives of the different soldiers, O’Brien is able to follow each characters physical and mental weight that they carried. The…
Tim O’Brien authored the novel “The Things They Carried” a novel filled with short stories about the Vietnam War. The first passage in the collection lists the numerous things the solders in O’Brien’s platoon carried. Varying from weapons, to thoughts of loved ones back home. Distorting the line between the tangible and intangible, O’Brien writes about the things like bibles, pantyhose, moccasins, and pictures. Things the men carried tangibly, but are used to give them something to think about other than the waning darkness of the war, that making them intangible. The intangible things are used to escape the war; weighing heavier than anything tangible possibly could. Specifically, they are burdened with death. The men carry the intangible burden of death, something always on their minds and weighing more than anything tangible they could ever carry. They did what they could not to acknowledge death, each using their own techniques try and put a spin on and lift the emotional baggage of war and war’s mortality.…
Looking at the title alone, the reader can safely infer that something is being carried, and that's exactly what O'Brien writes about. The book shows two different types of baggage, physical and intangible. Some of the physical items include books, gear, and mementos while the intangible things range from guilt to love. The importance of these various items outline who each character is. Besides carrying their gear, each solider carries fear and sadness for their safety and for those who they long to see. But, the main character Jimmy Cross carries more than the rest of his men; he carries the responsibility of keeping these men safe and keeping them alive. As the story progresses, there are comparisons between war and love relating to the physical objects that are being…
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, 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 characters of the story “The Things They Carried” mainly were inflicted with two kinds of weights: physical and emotional burden. In the first chapter, Tim O’ Brien sets up his storytelling by writing long lists of the things the soldiers were carrying in the War in Vietnam. Beyond the basic gears of war, he goes on mentioning the personal luggage that varied from person to person, mostly depending on their necessity, helping the reader to get to know the protagonists in a deeper sense this way. To know their souls, their customs, and the way they would probably live their “normal” lives. A letter, a photograph, a bible, the drugs, condoms, comic books, and a pair of moccasins are all life-story-telling property.…
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.…
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.…