Analysis of Important Quotes in "The Things They Carried"

| A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. (pg. 65)

Tim O’ Brien, having the memories of war engraved in his mind, recalls the memories of his youth during battle in “The Things They Carried,” an intriguing collection of military accounts that symbolize his attempt to resist closure from past experiences. O’ Brien’s story reflects the difficult choices people have to make in their struggle to confront the war waging inside their bodies as well as on the ground they tread. In Steven Kaplan’s criticism, “The Undying Uncertainty of the Narrator in Tim O’ Brien’s The Things They Carried,” he explores the uncertainty and inevitability that lies in the path of each soldier through their military conquest of Than Khe. In context to O’ Brien’s

O’Brien always questioned the idea of “enemies”. Throughout the book he questioned in many ways and asked why were they enemies. What have they done to make them enemies, he sought for answers to his questions and eventually justified them by “if I don't kill them then they will kill me”.He was afraid of both killing, and dying but he knew that if he didn’t kill then he himself would be dead. These experiences and suppression of ideas are what led O’Brien’s to write The Things They Carried. In real life, Tim O'Brien feared the war and wrote this book to persuade others and to plant an idea in their head about the horrors that they should not want to suffer. Tim portrays his fear of the war by sharing his experiences as stories. Tim portrays many of his fears

Throughout Tim O'Brien's, “How to Tell a True War Story”, the concept of truth and how one tells a “true” war story is discussed. Several factors contribute to the “truth” of the stories the soldiers told; the madness of the war, the civilians back home who didn't experience war or understand that it was hell, and the indescribable ways the soldiers felt. O'Brien explains that people willingly accept the facts of what happened during a war but, what they don’t consider is the deception of these facts that change through people’s stories. All of these factors combined caused the soldiers to react to certain situations and tell stories differently. O’Brien’s stories characterize that “truth” isn’t always a straightforward concept; and that it can be revealed in many ways. It can be the narrator’s intention, to provide the truth but the person listening might find a different truth to the story.

Memories are what make us who we are and storytelling is how we seek to share who we are with others. This has long been the tradition of mankind, passing on our experiences and lessons to others as a means to not only enlighten and endow our listeners with what we have learned about life, but also how those lessons have served to shaped who we are. When sharing our stories and memories, we are able to better resonate with our audience by connecting with them on an emotional level. Such is the manner in which the personal experiences of war are shared in the pieces The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara and The Things They Carried. Although McNamara and O’Brien’s experiences of war were vastly different, their personal recollections and the separate examinations of the manner in which they each experienced the war can serve to provide insight into the true nature of warfare. Both accounts prove that human memories are important in helping us to understand our own histories and that personal experiences often color the manner and method in which that history is told, whether our role is as a decision maker or the one being affected by the decisions of others. The depiction of the memory process for each piece will be examined in order to better understand each figure’s recollection of historical events in regards to their role, where McNamara served as one of the “planners” and O’Brien’s characters as the “participants.”

The war has changed O'Brien in many ways, it has taught him lessons, shown him things he has never seen before, been in situations that were virtually difficult situations to be in. He entered the war as a younger man who was scared of what would come to be if he tried to dodge the draft and war. He was afraid of the shame it would bring to him and his family. Although he contemplated dodging the war he ultimatley came to going to Vietnam and joining the fight. From this, O'Brien comes out of the war with horrific stories and events that took place reselling them throughout the novel so that the reader could get a clear understanding of the misconceptions of war and what it truly is. As said, " In a true war story, if theirs a moral at all,

The Things They Carried is a novel written by Tim O’Brien about the events and occurrences of one of the greatest points in the history of the United States, the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was an extremely bloody and deadly war that cost thousands of American soldiers their lives. Many people, civilians and soldiers, found the United States participation in the Vietnam War as wrong and controversial. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction to write this book, which portrays a blurred line between fiction and nonfiction stating true facts from his days as a foot soldier in Vietnam and fictional stories of heroic yet tragic moments. I was not in favor of his

Tim O’Brien felt and believed that he would be jeopardizing his own soul by killing people in the Vietnam War, which he views as immoral. He was convinced and persuaded that war was wrong and evil, since people were losing their lives as a result of it. He makes a decision to desert due to the belief that this is the only moral choice. It is however unfortunate that O’Brien lacks the courage to desert and hence, he lets himself to be sent to Vietnam War. “I simply couldn’t bring myself to flee.

reveals the truth of the war as the author remembers the war after twenty one years and

The reader can interpret that the war depicts these kids as adult soldiers who are responsible for the safety of many people. However, the O’ Brien depicts the soldiers in this book as kids. The reader can see that these soldiers are just kids because of how they love playing pranks and blowing things up. Also, this quote gives the reader a sense of human perspective on the war because it still shows how innocent these kids are and that these kids have still not seen the affect war has on someone. In conclusion, the book liberates us from facts and statistics and it provides us with a much broader and more human perspective on the war because of how the soldiers write about their fear and it shows that they are still human and have feelings and not pure soldiers.

Before Tim O’Brien had been called to war he always thought how much bravery he had in store for him. Tim O’Brien thought that he was too good for entering the war. “War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and

Often in the years following a war the notion of warfare is warped by common conceptions or cliches so that it no longer resembles the realities that the soldiers experienced. However, Tim O’Brien uses his own personal experiences from Vietnam to create stories which exhibit the real situations that these soldiers faced. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, demonstrates this unfiltered reality through multiple literary elements and the creation of fictional stories in order to portray the war accurately. Courage and valor are often associated with the idea of war and are often expected to be traits that all soldiers live by.

There are three main thing Tim O’Brien wants us to know about war. The first one thing is how war takes lives. The second one is how war helps us not feel alone. And the last thing is how war consoles us.

The purpose of this quote within the story, is to remind readers of the emotional journey and how war can affect people, years after it’s all over these men won’t be thinking of whether their friends died on a Wednesday or a Thursday, because it won’t matter. Their friend will still be gone. Personally, I find his random tidbits of what is factual and what is O’Brien’s imagination to be annoying and pointless, because the only people who could know the truth would be the people who lived it. As a reader, it’d be wise if he were to just write the stories and let his audience make up their own minds about what they read; that’s what defines a story. He states, “War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. (Pg. 76).” This excerpt from the text meant more to me than majority of this novel whether it fits his definition of a “true war story”, because it’s the most honest depiction I’ve read in awhile. When it comes down to it, it isn’t about the factuality or even the small details, a true story is based on the way it made the reader feel.

O’Brien was always persuaded that the Vietnam War was wrong. It was not right that people were dying as a result of it. It was evil. He argued that human life is very valuable because humans were the only creature on the world that are able to separate between good from bad. All men should pursue the good and not the bad. Some good action on the one hand might cause bad side effects for others. A man was most a man when he followed his understanding of good and when he tried to act on a reasonable way. Therefore he thought that a man can never be a man until he acts fully in the purist of goodness. O’Brien concluded that in his opinion the Vietnam War was bad, so he should not fight in it.