Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” was set in the time of the Vietnam War, and portrayed that each of the soldiers had something they carried. These things that each of the men carried represented them and how they coped when they were in the war. They needed these things as a necessity. Sometimes the things would get in the way of their thoughts and cause them to be distracted from their duties.…
A platoon of seventeen soldiers from America travel in booby-trap swamps and through the hills of Vietnam. “They been ordered to set ambushes, execute night patrols, and search out and destroy the massive tunnel complexes south of Chu Lai constructed by Viet Cong guerrillas” (McCarthy). On their voyage the men carry something with them; the things they carry have a meaning to each soldier which distinguishes them. The men are not completely prepared to deal with the stresses of war emotionally. The story circles around Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and the burden he feels for the death of Lavender, one of his soldiers. “The Things They Carried” reflects on each soldier and their way of trying to escape from the war. American writer Tim O’Brien had many outstanding works including “The Things They Carried”. This work illustrates O’Brien’s use of style,…
Many people tend to overlook the great obstacles and combats that our soldiers put themselves into in order to keep us safe,but have they looked deeper into the minds of each soldier and the story they carry. In the book The Things They Carried Tim O`Brien helps convey the true characteristics of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross throughout not only the Vietnam War but through the mental battle he suffers everyday dealing with the sorrows he carries.…
In “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien takes us back to the Vietnam War. He demonstrates to the reader that not only does each United States soldier carry something physical with them, but they also carry an emotional burden as well. What each man carries is a combination of thoughts, emotions, and past experiences.…
Tim O’Brien wrote The Things They Carry, an emotional story about soldiers leaving home to fight in the Vietnam War and the items they carried with them. O’Brien begins his story, when soldiers go into combat and overseas to serve our country include military issue equipment as well as personal items, which hold memories of fear or emotional value. O’Brien shows readers the weight soldiers carry while serving in the military. The love for family and country are important and how memories can be carried to aid in relieving stress of the battle.…
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.…
In the very first story The Things They Carried, everyone is changed by they death of Ted Lavender, especially Lieutenant Cross. Lavender was a very nervous and careful soldier. While most of the soldiers carried sentimental items or items specifically for war, Ted carried tranquilizers to keep him sane throughout the war. Because he was so nervous and careful, it was surprising that he was the one to die first in the story. Directly after his death, as Lieutenant Cross was leading his men to Than Khe, he found himself quivering at the thought of his…
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…
O'Brien himself carried home scars of the war. In the chapters "The Man I Killed" and "Ambush" we find O'Brien struggling to come to terms with his own guilt. He expressed how he almost instantly regretted throwing the grenade that killed that Vietnamese soldier. He then imagined that the young mans life was much like his own. Had he not had writing as a release, O'Brien claimed that he may very well have been paralyzed from this…
Civil War General Sherman once said, “War is hell.” He was right. In the short story “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien shows us the hell that our soldiers suffered. The narrator shows us a captivating, and up-close story about our soldiers in the Vietnam War. While the title relates to the story about things carried, but the soldiers carry more than just the physical burdens-in many cases, they are weighed down by emotional baggage. The emotional baggage that lies heavy in their hearts outweighs the physical weight. In addition to the items that they must carry, they also carry personal mementos.…
It affects the mind and can change a person entirely. O'Brien says that "War is boring"(O'Brien 34). While this is true, others think "It is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love"(Evans 3). Sometimes the troops would feel like they are "fighting two different wars"(O'Brien 63). This can mean many different things including the war of staying alive, trying to stay the same person they used to be, the war of sanity. "O'Brien's soldiers are people who live in extremis"(Evans 2). Somehow these people complete their missions while possibly not wanting to be part of the group and situation entirely. At one point Jimmy thought "all I wanted was to live the lifestyle was born to, a mainstream life"(O'Brien 51). Most soldiers don't want to be in the position they are, even if they disagree, a part of them wants to live a normal life a be at home. War can seem everlasting. "You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end. Not then, not ever"(O'Brien 76). But "in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do"(O'Brien 85). O'Brien knows what war means to him because he experienced it first hand. It takes many qualities to be a living war veteran. They…
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is novel narrated by Tim O’Brien describing events that occurred during his experience in the Vietnam War. This bittersweet novel takes place if various events throughout the book, scattering the events that took place in Tim O’Brien’s thoughts. One of the characters in the book named Jimmy Cross was the lieutenant/leader of Tim O’Brien’s group in the Vietnam War. Throughout the events that took place, deaths occurred leaving Cross feeling responsible for the deaths. Cross’ has leadership but fell short of it because of the guilt of the deaths in his group, so, he lives his life in grief since he never forgave himself of the deaths.…
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.…
A part of the story that really stuck out to me was Lieutenant Cross's particular brand of love for a girl back home, Martha. Cross was a good leader, but he let his emotional drama from home begun to get in the way of the way he lead his company. Obviously, Cross was in love with Martha, it is mentioned several times how he carried mementos form her and that she was in his thoughts, night and day. "Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should've done." (Cross 806)She was one of the emotional burdens Cross was carrying with him throughout the story. This was Cross's way to cope with some of what was going on around him in Vietnam. He wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters she wrote were mostly chatty and elusive on the matter of love. This is interesting because Martha was a woman he had met one time; they had a great time on a date, but that was it. For Cross this appeared to be his last enjoyable memory he had before he left, and he carried it across the world with him to Vietnam. "Cross understood that love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it to be" (Cross ).It is easy for me to understand how Cross could put so much of his thoughts on this girl he spent…
The author is Tim O’Brien The Things they Carried written in 1986. The story is told by the author almost 20 years after the Vietnam war, it tells a story of men in combat and the things they carried before, during and after the war and how many of the things the soldiers carried help to shape and define their lives. In life people are defined by the things they carry like social class, education or lack of; race, religious belief, what we possess, while the author states “it is determined by necessity”(637), while necessity does dictate and define our everyday lives, like school after the age of 30, some do it for career advancement, some do it to re-enter the job market, whatever the reason necessity dictates that it must be done.…