The Vietnam War Reflected In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried
Jennifer Vega
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Effects of the U.S. Wars
The author of The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, incorporates various messages within his book. One of the most important messages within the text greatly deals with war and everything associated with it. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, O’Brien is exceedingly qualified to provide readers with an accurate depiction of what it feels like for a soldier to live in a constant state of war. The series of stories within The Things They Carried present us with the difficult choices forced upon those who have dealt with the conflicts of combat (Chen). O’Brien’s stories also show us that a war is never truly over; a great number of soldiers who survive a war must often face the damaging repercussions of warfare long after it has ended. Consequently, the message being presented in The Things They Carried by Tim O 'Brien is the notion that war has the power to transform people, altering and skewing their mental states, their principles, and their sense of morality by stripping human beings of their humanity, and instead replacing it with fear and trauma.
In the first chapter of the book, “The Things …show more content…
A friend of Rat’s, Curt Lemon, gets killed; about a week later, he decides to write his dead friend’s sister a letter to tell her what a great brother she had, and to tell her that he was a true comrade and hero. Two months pass, and Curt’s sister never writes Rat back. Frustrated about this, Rat spits at the ground and calls her a “dumb cooze.” The narrator says how sometimes a true war story cannot be believed, how a true war story is impossible to tell, and a true war story cannot be made abstract or rendered to simple generalizations because war is too ambiguous. The narrator remembers how Curt Lemon died, and how he and Jensen are ordered to retrieve the body parts from a
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Effects of the U.S. Wars
The author of The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, incorporates various messages within his book. One of the most important messages within the text greatly deals with war and everything associated with it. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, O’Brien is exceedingly qualified to provide readers with an accurate depiction of what it feels like for a soldier to live in a constant state of war. The series of stories within The Things They Carried present us with the difficult choices forced upon those who have dealt with the conflicts of combat (Chen). O’Brien’s stories also show us that a war is never truly over; a great number of soldiers who survive a war must often face the damaging repercussions of warfare long after it has ended. Consequently, the message being presented in The Things They Carried by Tim O 'Brien is the notion that war has the power to transform people, altering and skewing their mental states, their principles, and their sense of morality by stripping human beings of their humanity, and instead replacing it with fear and trauma.
In the first chapter of the book, “The Things …show more content…
A friend of Rat’s, Curt Lemon, gets killed; about a week later, he decides to write his dead friend’s sister a letter to tell her what a great brother she had, and to tell her that he was a true comrade and hero. Two months pass, and Curt’s sister never writes Rat back. Frustrated about this, Rat spits at the ground and calls her a “dumb cooze.” The narrator says how sometimes a true war story cannot be believed, how a true war story is impossible to tell, and a true war story cannot be made abstract or rendered to simple generalizations because war is too ambiguous. The narrator remembers how Curt Lemon died, and how he and Jensen are ordered to retrieve the body parts from a