..."The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien describes a group of soldiers marching through Vietnam. He does this by describing the items that each of them carries with him during the march. The things that the soldiers carry with them are both tangible and intangible items and what these things are depends upon the individual soldier. They carry the basic "necessities" for survival (if one can consider such things as M&M's a necessity) and the bare minimum to make life as livable as possible. But they also carry memories, and fears, and it is intangible items like these that are the prime focus of the story. The weight of these abstract items is as real as that of any physical ones, and unlike those physical objects, they are not so easily cast away. Throughout the story, O'Brien alternates between narrative passages and simple descriptions of the items that the soldiers are carrying. This fragmentation brings focus to the things the men are carrying, both tangible and intangible, without downplaying the narration. In the descriptive segments of the story, O'Brien is very exact in his descriptions and seems to be merely cataloging what is being carried: "As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45(c)caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds full loaded." O'Brien gives only straight forward descriptions in these segments and the writing is void of any feeling or sentiment. When describing the intangible things, however...
Words: 817 - Pages: 4
...Everyone carries luggage literally or figuratively, people carry a variety of things with them, wallets with pictures of family, credit cards, small trinkets etc. The things they carried by Tim O’Brien can be looked at in two different ways, are what they’re carrying merely items or do they have a deeper meaning for each individual. The items carried by the men in this story serve several purposes for each individual, whether its superstition, sentimental or essential to their military jobs. By using cataloging and paying close attention to the details, in The things they carried there are several characters in which we can look deeper into the items they carry, and how they affect each character and how that plays into who they are outside of their military life. Before we look into each individual character, first it is important to look at how each character is the same in what they carry. The story has an extensive list of items that each person carries as basic military items. General items they carried include P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits,military payment certificates, C rations and Two or three canteens of water. These lightweight items are the basic essentials that a military man needs and thusly they do not burden the soldier too much. However throughout the story the mentioning of weight is repeated several...
Words: 1797 - Pages: 8
...Joey Cav 12/17/13 The Things They Carried During the Vietnam War, the fighting men carried many things. They ranged from guns, ammo, comic books, toilet paper to even Kool-Aid. They carried these things to help them fight the enemy and for comfort, but not all of these things helped these men. They also carried thoughts, memories, and even emotions about the war, and their life in general. While carrying all of these things, they were expected to fight a war, a war that some of them did not care about, or even understand. J.R.R Tolkien’s quote: “The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them” sums up many of the themes found in this novel. Daily life itself carries many hurts (i.e. death of loved ones, loss of jobs, illness, etc.) and mischances (i.e. missing cues for directions in life etc.) that are intensified during a war. Early in the novel we are confronted with Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his love for Martha, a girl from back home who isn’t even his girlfriend, yet he carries her letters with him and re-reads them every chance he gets. This proves costly when Ted Lavender, was killed during a patrol, and Lt. Cross blames himself. He feels the pain of the loss and the embarrassment of keeping his mind on Martha (his love interest) and not on his job which resulted in this death. “Lieutenant Cross kept to himself. He pictured Martha’s smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men, and now Ted Lavender...
Words: 703 - Pages: 3
...Shane McDonald The Things They Carried In 1990, Tim O'Brien released his second novel about Vietnam, and in the late Sunday edition of the New York Times in March, Robert Harris, editor of The Book Review, reviewed O'Brien's work. According to Harris, only a few novels have found a way to clarify, with any lasting impression the meaning the war had for the soldiers who served there. He believes that O'Brien's work moves beyond the typical war story filled with fighting and battle and instead spends his time examining courage and fear. Harris believes that this is done with sensitivity and insight and by "questioning the role that imagination plays in helping to form our memories and our own versions of the truth" (1). The Things They Carried is a collection of interwoven stories, and while it is a work of fiction dealing with the same platoon, Harris believes that it can in no way be considered a novel due to the structure, but rather it is a collection of short stories unified by characters and theme. At the same time, he also believes that while it is not a novel, all of the stories cohere and it is still a worthy piece of fiction. Harris goes on to say that while there is a lot of gore, as is typical of war stories, O'Brien explains why it was necessary through the voice of the text. Harris quotes from the story "How to Tell a True War Story" which states, "If you do not care for obscenity, you don't care for truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch...
Words: 458 - Pages: 2
...The Things They Carried the characters face many physical and emotional stresses which test their ability to remain strong individuals. O’Brien gives clear example to the emotional burdens the characters are faced with throughout their durations in the war as well as at home. Each story reflects a characters emotional and physical well being. Memories cascade their ways onto the shoulders of the character’s who seem to find emotional support by ignoring or just plain mocking the unpleasant. Subsequently, a few of the stories they tell seem to be in disarray but give the illusion of actuality. The responsibilities to their communities as well as their memories weigh the characters down causing catastrophic damage not only to their personal lives, but their physical well beings as a whole. Norman Bowker silently suffers throughout his duration in the war. Watching silently as his fellow comrade’s fall both emotionally and physically, Bowker never seems to show his emotions to the reader. In essence he has bottled up perceptions about his experience in the war and the death of his comrade Kiowa. In “Notes”, the letter received by O’Brien gives way to a different Bowker, full of emotional agony from deep within. Bowker’s death was one of the most catastrophic events throughout the book. The emotions seemed to pour out as he writes in his letter to O’Brien the effects of the community and the sudden thrust back into the civilian world, in his letter he writes,“[t]he thing is,...
Words: 780 - Pages: 4
...1. Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha. Henry Dobbins carried peaches. Dave Jensen carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and bars of soap. Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope. Mitchell Sanders carried condoms. Some emotional burdens would be hopelessness, love, fear, guilt, and trust. I thought of hopelessness after I read when they were waiting to get picked up by the chopper and it made me think they all carry a slight emotional burden of hopelessness. Feelings were you don’t know when you will be out of war, when you will be home, and if you will get picked up from the chopper. The burden of love because Jimmy Cross is battling with his emotions and imagination of him and Martha together. The burden of fear because all these men carry things that help them not to be scared anymore, or cover up their fear with these items. The burden of trust because in the book, Kiowa reads the Old Testament. I thought he reads this because he doesn’t have any trust in himself or his men. The burden of guilt comes to mind immediately after Strunk emerges from the tunnel; Ted Lavender is shot and killed by a sniper. Cross may have thought it was his fault for letting one of his men die, while daydreaming about Martha. 2. During the time they were at war I think the physical things are more of a burden. Physically it makes them carry an awful lot of unnecessary weight. Also it may make them think about home, which could be a good thing. Physical burdens...
Words: 719 - Pages: 3
...Andres Pena COP 1102 “The Things They Carried” What does becoming a soldier mean? Does it mean that duty comes before love or does it mean the opposite? Could it be that soldiers do not have control of their feelings? From the mind of Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” describes young soldiers that were automatically bumped up into manhood. The author treats the inner conflict that each soldier had to bear during the Vietnam War while fighting for their country. Witnessing horrific scenes of war and the emotional and physical burdens that each of them carried, O’Brien unfolds how these men had no choice but to fulfill their patriotic duty. As the leader of the platoon, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross goes through an inner conflict between love and duty, carrying his orders in his mind and Martha in his heart. But how far can war or following orders, impair the human side of compassion and love? Although, soldiers become men at war, O’Brien focuses in a story where war makes men emotionally handicap, leaving mental scars that may never heal. The story is told by a third person’s point of view, however, O’Brien includes a touch of his personal experiences during the war where he spent a year in Vietnam (Hicks). As Josiah Bunting said, “The things he carried into war are very different from what he carried away from it” (Bunting) expressing O’Brien’s experience at war and how his experience as a soldier would convince readers to believe that the different traumatic moments...
Words: 1662 - Pages: 7
...The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien ENG 1300 W5A2 Andrea Carr South University Online The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien “The Things They Carried” is one of several short stories written by Tim O’Brien that brilliantly portrays a squad of young American soldiers in the Vietnam War. Each of the short stories builds on the last but in The Things They Carried the author places focus on how immature boys cope and their transformation into young men and responsible leaders. O’Brien is not a character in the story but the fact that he is fluent with military lingo and conveys great passion and a working knowledge of the military suggests that he was a soldier. He tells his war story of soldiers’ experiences with obsession, duty, regret, burden, comradely and maturing. He achieves this by describing every facet of the items they carried with great accuracy and detail. The things they carried as they are depicted in the story represent literal things, emotional things, psychological things and symbolic things all weighing in at different levels of importance. There were physical as well as emotional things they carried on their missions, both were equally burdensome. O’Brien states that during missions many of these items were discarded no regardless of their importance to achieve a higher level of comfort. The author further states that the choppers would effortlessly replace the discarded items. In research conducted by Michael Tavel Clarke he implies...
Words: 1603 - Pages: 7
...The Vietnam War: Weight of Emotions “The Things They Carried” is a short story that describes a group of soldiers and the tangible and intangible items with which they chose to burden their bag packs and hearts. The author creatively manipulates two different ideas, such as ambiguous morality and loneliness to exaggerate the theme which is of physical and emotional burdens. The soldiers carried vital items for survival during this difficult time of their lives. The men tried to take comfort in the personal items and memories they brought with them while they were away from home. With a list of each item a solider took to war, the author carefully pieces together a puzzle about who these characters are. O’Brien’s use of imagery helps to visualize the battle field and understand the soldiers. As the story starts to unfold, the reader is greeted by a love struck narrator by the name of Lieutenant Cross. O’Brien describes the relationship between the narrator and Martha, a girl from back home who he is in love with, but she in return does not share the same feelings. Cross carries letters she wrote and fantasizes daily of their illusive love. His love for Martha becomes more of an obsession. “He loved her so much he could not stop thinking about her” (O’Brien 598). His constant question of her love for him causes Cross to fall short of his responsibilities as the leader of the platoon. “Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter--he...
Words: 810 - Pages: 4
...Tim O'Brien does a fantastic job of blurring the lines of what is true and what is fiction in The Things They Carried. In fact, he often points out that he has made entire stories up, after the fact. He defends his decisions by proposing that what he has done is, in fact, not lie, but rather tell a story-truth. He argues that his reason for doing this is to bring the story to life more than it could live through the happening-truth. 'I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth' (O'Brien, 183). O'Brien believes that, when accompanied by vivid details which essentially make the reader view the scene as a dream, story-truths can carry greater emotional truths than ever possible to be achieved through actual, happening-truths. With this, he shows, contrary to belief, how story-truths are often truer than happening-truths, and demonstrates this through the addition of often graphic details. Happening-truth encompasses actual events that take place. However true these stories may be, they are often times viewed as unreal simply because they have no details to back them up. The entire shit field scene that was put into this book, for example, was turned from a happening-truth into a story-truth because the original version was not believable. The reader can see this through O'Brien describing the letters that he received from Norman Bowker. Norman writes to Tim, telling him that he should write about the event. 'What...
Words: 2289 - Pages: 10
...Vietnam, or nearly one million troops, who gave into post-traumatic stress. PTSD must have been common in the group of soldiers in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” due to the amount of burdens each soldier carried. Throughout the story, O’Brien demonstrates theme of psychological, physical and mental burdens carried by every soldier. He emphasizes these burdens by discussing the weight that the soldiers carry; their psychological and mental stress they have to undertake as each of them experience the brutality of the Vietnam War. The physical burden that each soldier carried was a necessity for them due to their emotional burdens that they carried. O'Brien depicted of all the things the men carried in order to create illustrations for the reader. One important use of description the author uses is weight. He uses weight to describe the burden of items that are carried by the soldiers in this story. “The weapon weighed 7.5 pounds unloaded, 8.2 pounds with its full 20-round magazine.” He continues later saying “Among the grunts, some carried the M-79 grenade launcher, 5.9 pounds unloaded, a reasonably light weapon except for the ammunition, which was heavy. A single round weighted 10 ounces. The typical load was twenty-five pounds.” This gives the reader a sense of the struggle that the men endure in carrying these things. When fighting during the war, the physical baggage added up, creating a burden on each soldier’s back. Carrying at least fifty pounds of equipment on...
Words: 1227 - Pages: 5
...All through school students were only taught the very top layer about the Vietnam War, such as dates, places that the war took place, and straight statistics of the war. The parts that were left out are the tragedies, and the permanent scars this war left. Students are told about the number of deaths that occurred, but they are not told about the lives that were affected, or how disturbing the war really was to the soldiers that fought in it. Much can be interpreted by what people write. The great thing about interpretations is that each writing can be interpreted differently. Just like Tim O'Brien's book titled "The Things They Carried." It is a very deep and touching collection of stories about the Vietnam War and many people’s experiences in this destructive war. One story that is a touching and very intriguing is titled, "The Man I Killed." A reader can look at this story and relate it back to things they learned in school, but the point of the story is not this but rather things that cannot be taught in public schools. This specific story goes inside a soldier's mind and shows the reader what they are thinking when they kill someone. The way that O'Brien starts this story is with great description that helps the reader visualize what is going on. He describes a mangled body that someone had recently killed; again not part of teachings in public schools. The story goes on to tell what the victims background may have been in the eyes of the soldier. How maybe he was a scholar...
Words: 721 - Pages: 3
...What We Learn from “The Things They Carried” “War is a bitch” (O’Brien 30), said Azar, an American soldier who joined Vietnam War. War doesn’t bring anything good to anybody. It just creates sorrow and pains to people. In “The Things They Carried”, the author Tim O’Brien shows us a realistic picture of what the war in Vietnam was like. He demonstrates how brutal the war is and the horrible reality of death in war, and how soldiers deal with the pain. This novel should be on the reading selections of The Interpretation of Literature because as it is a novel composed of war stories, it brings some enlightening endeavor and educational experiences to make us understand more about the war. To make us have an objective perspective of what happened in Vietnam War in 1968, O’Brien let us know a little about each soldier and what they carried with them along with the war in the first chapter. The “things” that the soldiers carried were both literal and figurative. The soldiers carry out of necessity for survival, such as guns, helmets, and other forms of weaponry, as well as things they carry more out of habit. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from Martha, a girl that he loved. “Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations, Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers”(2). O’Brien also describes specifically the weight of the item that...
Words: 1333 - Pages: 6
...Norman Bowker and the Weight He Carried in Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried: a Work of Fiction The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a series that talk about different experiences that soldiers went through during war the Vietnam War. In the 1960’s young men with no experience whatsoever were drafted and sent to fight a terrible war. The worst part of the war for most of these young soldiers was having to cope with the aftermath of all the terrible things they encountered. For example, before going to Vietnam, Norman Bowker had a normal life with his friends and family, but when he returns from Vietnam, he finds himself lost in his own town, his girlfriend married to someone else, one of his friends dead; he feels like a total stranger, and, as a result he is no longer able to call this place home. As can be seen in the chapter “Speaking of Courage” and in “Notes”, Norman Bowker is one of those soldiers who, even long after the war has ended, was never able to recover from the emotional burdens he carried. “Speaking of Courage” tells us the story from Norman Bowker’s point of view of Kiowa’s death in Vietnam. Because of the heavy rains, “the Song Tra Bong overflowed its banks and the land turned into a deep, thick muck for a quarter mile on either side”(136). One night the platoon had settled near the river. Soon they realized they had settled in a shit field, and later that night they took mortar fire. “The field just exploded. Rain and slop and shrapnel...
Words: 1400 - Pages: 6
...The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien is a postmodern novel that details the daily activities of Alpha Company (a platoon of soldiers) throughout the Vietnam War. O’Brien depicts the harsh realities and terrors associated with war and the harsh effects soldiers are faced to deal with on an ongoing basis. Given the time frame and settings of both these chapters at first glance, “The Lives of the Dead” and “In the Field” appear to be critically different, but after further analysis one can easily fathom that they are in fact quite similar. O’Brien emphasizes these similarities by using the theme of death and the effects correlated with it, regardless of the situation. The effects of death are then identified by studying several characters reactions to the death of various platoon members and key people within their lives. By doing this O’Brien is able to connect these chapters seamlessly, and thus strengthen the theme of death throughout his novel. “The Lives of the Dead” is an unique chapter as it not only captures what it is like to be a soldier in the Vietnam War, but it also focuses on the experiences one faces with death. Furthermore, how it doesn’t matter your age, gender or status death will ultimately play a key role in your life. After Lieutenant Jimmy Cross sent in an air strike on a seemingly deserted area that resulted in the death of one old man, the members of Alpha Company are forced to cope with the death. Once again, the majority of them take it as a joke...
Words: 1161 - Pages: 5
