Hyperbole In The Things They Carried

In the fictional novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien vividly explains the fear and trauma the soldiers encountered during the Vietnam War. Many of these soldiers are very young and inexperienced. They begin to witness their acquaintances’ tragic demise, and kill other innocent lives on their own. Many people have a background knowledge on the basis of what soldiers face each day, but they don’t have a clear understanding of what goes through these individual’s minds when they’re at war. O’Brien gives descriptive details on the soldiers’ true character by appealing to emotions, using antithesis and imagery.

We have all seen or read about the political and social upheavals caused by war. Some may have even experienced it first-hand. Throughout history war has had negative psychological implications on those effected. However, there is no greater negative impact of war than the psychological and emotional turmoil that it causes individual soldiers.

They carry many things, they carry a massive amount of weight on their shoulders. However, the heaviest thing that they carry cannot be touched. The intangible weight of fear, loss, anger, and guilt far outweigh any tangible item that they could possibly possess. The Thing They Carried is not only an eye-opening collection of war stories, but it is also a love story, a memoir, and a tribute to the unimaginable things that happen to our soldiers in war zones. War changes men, makes them different, and when they come home they are not the same person and they often have trouble readjusting to the life of a civilian.

Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried” epitomizes the degradation of morals that war produces. This interpretation is personified in the characters who gradually blur the line dividing right and wrong as the motives for war itself become unclear. The morality of soldiers and the purpose of war are tied also to the truth the soldiers must tell themselves in order to participate in the gruesome and random killing which is falsely justified by the U.S government. The lack of purpose in the Vietnam War permanently altered the soldier’s perspective of how to react to situations and in most cases they turned to violence to express their frustration.

Soldiers throughout the ages have had to carry the burden of what war brings upon them. The physical strain is a huge weight to carry, but the mental turmoil that a solider must endure becomes most strenuous and lasting of the burdens placed upon them. When soldiers carry these burdens into a war zone, it is so the majority can live a life free from violence and turmoil. There is strong underlying metaphor in Tim O’Brien’s Novel The Things They Carried. Metaphor is used throughout the text of the book to create a sense of understanding or to convey a different meaning then the text originally suggests.

The Things They Carried offered a unique and personal look into the life of one soldier’s experience. It showed how the war held obligations to its soldiers and expectations for each of the men to follow. The Things They Carried also showed a side of war that was not always seen in other documents and accounts such as Tim O’Brien thoughts and feelings during the war. However, many of the things O’Brien stated throughout his book is very similar to the experiences shared by men in the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Moreover, despite some similarities, each war is unique and have their own distinctive causes and effects that have solidified their importance in American history. When it comes to war, it seems that most experiences

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

Memories and stories swarming the mind and twisted by imagination are the only glimpse of humanity a man can hold on to while at war. Through stories, men at war can share their thinning humanity with one another. The deafening silence of war defeats the human spirit and moral compass, thus it is not only man against man but man against sanity. Tim O 'Brien 's “The Things They Carried” provides a narrative of soldiers in the Vietnam War holding on to the only parts of themselves through their imagination. O’Brien employs symbolic tokens, heavy characterization, and the grueling conflict of man to illustrate how soldiers create metaphorical stories to ease the burden of war.

Unlike most war stories, in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” the war in Vietnam is not glorified and instead, the story is believable and raw. The horrors of war that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his squadron experience in an unfiltered, yet emotionally detached way that molds the structure and the language. This story, through its structure and techniques, displays the idea of how disillusionment and loss of innocence create unimaginable burdens for the American soldiers. O’Brien portrays the characters’ burdens with a monotonous and lulling tone through the use of flashbacks, setting, imagery, and metonymy.

For the seventeen Soldiers portrayed in “The Things We Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the physical pain was very minimal weight to carry compared to the emotional scars that they will carry throughout their entire life. This story does an amazing job portraying full human emotion that anyone put into a situation would feel, such as heavy guilt, sadness, anger, lack of motivation, perseverance, horror, and false security. All of these are notorious feelings that every soldier back in history, and now still feel when they are on a mission. “The Things They carried” shows a deep vulnerability of everyday human’s thought process during times of great stress, that before, wasn’t considered by the general public and media when speaking about what it

The Things They Carried is more than a story of physical warfare during the Vietnam War, but the battle of inner demons as well. In his novel, Tim O’ Brien takes us deep within the lives of his semi-fictional platoon in the midst of the Vietnam War in which he elaborates upon the harsh realities soldiers faced every day. O’ Brien claims, “They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.” We see here that O’ Brien’s main purpose in writing his novel was to show the reader that the weight of the emotional toll was equivalent if not greater than the physical effects of war. The Vietnam War was an emotionally taxing experience for the soldiers, causing them to live in a false sense of reality, which tested their morals, and ultimately affected their psychological well-being.

The story “The Things They Carried” reveals emotional and physical challenges soldiers face during the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien introduces the reader not only to the subject of war and physical exhaustion, but also to human feelings and inner struggle soldiers are going through at this war. Besides the equipment and necessary things, soldiers carried emotions which strengthen their hope of staying alive in order to continue their mission. Tim O’Brien uses female figure, Martha, to create psychological escape which distracts a young soldier, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, from the war. However, such a distraction leads to the death of a group member, Ted Lavender. The illusion of love for Martha and false hopes gradually transform into bitter feeling of guilt and the harsh reality of war. Tim O’Brien masterfully describes Jimmy Cross’ and other soldier’s experience and feelings during

"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing."(20) The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is collection of war story that focuses around his life and relationships with people in the Vietnam War, especially the part people usually choose not to focus on: The burden, the guilt and the regret. In the war stories it is forgotten that soldiers that fought in those wars are real people that had to deal with the consequences of their actions. O'Brien integrates this into the book by making Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the highest ranking soldier in their group, the scapegoat.

A big theme and point in Tim O'Brien’s novel is how many situations hurt the soldiers’ lives. From the beginning, O'Brien starts his work by numbering the many things soldiers have to carry; Knives, guns, pictures, and some feelings and trust issues they had with their family before leaving for war. O'Brien tells us and explains how each soldier was hurting, and how it was for them to get use to the war and the environment they were in, as he says; “Jimmy Cross did not want the responsibility of leading these men. He had never wanted it.” (167). In this quote, O'Brien reveals how tough it was for Lieutenant Cross to have this responsibility in the war. O'Brien contemplated over and over again, trying to decide if he wanted to go to war and if it was for him or not. He has seen it as something he couldn’t do. More the less, they saw the war as irrelevant nonsense at times.

“The Things They Carried” provides a personal view into the minds of soldiers, and tells us the emotional and psychological costs of war. The soldiers may have carried physical objects, but some of these objects connect to a deeper psychological weight most do not see.