Essay On The Things They Carried

In the story The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien shows the reader a sense of depressing love. O’Brien uses the physical weight carried by the soldiers as a motif for the emotional burdens they must endure while fighting in Vietnam. A love of which is portrayed in the story with a soldier loving a woman more than his fellow soldiers. But this woman does not love him in the same way. O’Brien uses many literary devices throughout the story, and shall be covered in this text. The tone in the text is very prevalent, and O’Brien gives the reader easy access to find and understand them.

The Vietnam War began in 1954, consisting of many extensive, horrific years of battle that seemed to create more harm to the United States and its soldiers rather than to North Vietnam. The 500,000 United States military personnel returned home with the loss of the war and the loss of their friends on their minds. Although the physical and emotional experiences that the men went through is unfathomable, Tim O’Brien does a great job portraying what life as a soldier was truly like in the Vietnam War. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien depicts the unstable emotional and psychological condition of the American soldiers through the symbolism of their belongings and personal anecdotes from their lives.

“The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’Brien is a novel whose theme is not only related to soldiers but to everyday people as well. The theme of this novel lies in the struggles that soldiers bear, both physically and emotionally. The title —The Things They Carried— and most of

A person’s possessions can tell a great deal about the person that they belong to. Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Things They Carried” uses the objects that soldiers are carrying in Vietnam to reveal information about their families, lives, and values as well as the theme and tone of the story. The story follows the main character Lieutenant Jim Cross and his platoon throughout Vietnam. It provides an account of their experiences prior to and following the death of one of their men, Ted Lavender.

In "The Things They Carried," O'Brien made reference to the Vietnam war that was closely associated with the physical, psychological, and emotional weight the soldiers beared.  The overall method of presentation of this story incorporated many different outlooks on the things the soldiers carried, dealt with, and were forced to adapt to.  In addition to this, O'Brien showed us the many reasons why and how the soldiers posessed these things individually and collectively and how they were associated directly and indirectly.  The strong historical content in "The Things They Carried" helped emphasize the focus of the story and establish a clearer understanding of details in the

The Things They Carried, a fiction novel by Tim O’Brien, carries courage throughout the stories he tells by describing what it takes to be a soldier in Vietnam. Through burning the pictures and letters from a loved one, to seeing a friend’s remains in a tree, and carrying on despite witnessing a friend die, right before him, O’Brien allows the reader to witness the true courage needed to be a soldier. Being courageous is what holds these men together and makes every one of these stories string together and relate to one another. Much like soldiers, these stories build each other up and amplify their effects together. Tim O’Brien represents how people coming from different places experience the same need to be courageous during a time of war in the fiction novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

Tim O’Brien’s The Things they Carried is a riveting war story that has the power to evoke emotion from the coldest soul; O’Brien depicts graphic events from his time served in the Vietnam war. From death to drugs, O’Brien’s seen it all. On pages 57-61, O’Brien is at a crossroads; he is debating on whether or not he should fight in the Vietnam War. At this point in the novel, O’Brien quits his job, leaves his conventional life behind and flees to northern Minnesota. Towards the end of his trip, O’Brien goes fishing with the lodge owner; this is where he makes his emotional decision to go to war. O’Brien’s powerful word choice, use of imagery, and oxymoron work in conjunction to develop a somber mood.

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried has within it many recurring themes, one of the most prominent of which is repetition. Throughout the book, repetition is used to convey a wide range of ideas and emotions, from the prominence of the soldiers' burdens in "The Things They Carried" to regret in "The Man I Killed." No matter its specific use, O’Brien’s use of repetition throughout the novel always conveys veterans’ ‘emotional truth’ of being unable to escape the war, both in Vietnam and at home.

The Things They Carried is a work of historical fiction written by Vietnam war veteran, Tim O’Brien. This novella is a collection of linked short stories about American soldiers serving in the Vietnam war. The novella contains a numerous amount of deep,complex characters who help characterize each other. In the The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien characterizes the soldiers through the round female characters

The Things They Carried is a novel that depicts the physical and mental things soldiers had to carry with them during and after Vietnam through the use of multiple short stories about different soldiers in the Vietnam War. Each of the short stories concentrated on a different aspect, but combined to form an overall life lesson about what these young men went through and what they carried with them in their life once the war started. A repeating

Throughout the time period of the Vietnam War, the thousands of men who fought during this time were looked down upon. Many people in the United States were against the war and gave no appreciation to soldiers fighting the Vietnam War. In his novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, showed the guilt and shame that soldiers themselves went through being in the Vietnam War. Through not feeling brave and heroic enough, or feeling the fear of embarrassing not only themselves, but their families and hometowns if they were to flee from the war, they constantly felt regret and shame. No matter where you look in the story of The Things They Carried, you will always see the shame and guilt the soldiers are carrying.

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, is a story that talks and describes about a platoon of soldiers in Vietnam. The story revolves around the death of one of the soldiers in Vietnam. The story gives a great description of what life in Vietnam is really like. In the novel Tim O’Brien, describes how loneliness and isolation can be very destructive to someone’s life.

“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a short story written about the Vietnam War. The title has two meanings. The first is their duties and equipment for the war. The second, the emotional sorrows they were put through while at war. Their wants and needs, the constant worry of death were just a few of the emotional baggage they carried. During the Vietnam War, like all wars, there were hard times. Being a soldier wasn’t easy. Soldiers always see death, whether it be another soldier or an enemy. In “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien explores the motivation of solders in the Vietnam War to understand their role in combat, to stay in good health, and accept the death of a fellow soldier.

Tim O 'Brien 's novel The Things They Carried is meant to display the effects of Vietnam on both American soldiers as well as the boys they once were. Vietnam is a society where human decency is left behind, and death is embraced as either a joke or an escape--where the horrors of reality are turned comical and exaggerated in order to keep going. Tim O 'Brien shows how Vietnam turns him from a boy unknowing of death, to a young man unwilling to face it, to a soldier laughing in the face of it, to a veteran unwilling to leave it behind, and finally, to an author left to make sense of it all.

“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’ Brien is a story in which the author details the possessions the emotions and the memories which were carried by the soldiers into the Vietnam War. The accuracy fact fullness and the attention to details make this story a truthful experience, riding on a thin line between fiction and a reality. It embodies the transformation that a soldier in a war zone undergoes. The author being a war veteran himself captures the events in a vivid manner. The two works of literature serve as an authentic and knowledgeable depiction of men fighting a war. They not only carry the weight of weaponry and ammunitions and supplies needed but also the weight of the struggle and the violent deaths that surround them which weigh heavier than the items they carried. The outcomes of war for the side that wins or loses results in devastation of the people but the soldiers are the ones who carry with them the memories of pain and struggle long after the war ends. Every war is partly fought on the ground and partly in the mind of soldiers.