Literary Analysis Of The Things They Carried

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.

In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien created several allusions that each character endured during the Vietnam War. Throughout the story were vast representations of the things soldiers carried both mentally and physically. The things they carried symbolized their individual roles internally and externally. In addition to symbolism, imagination was a focal theme that stood out amongst the characters. This particular theme played a role as the silent killer amongst Lt. Cross and the platoon both individually and collectively as a group. The theme of imagination created an in depth look of how the war was perceived through each character which helped emphasize their thoughts from an emotional stand point of being young men out at war.

“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

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.

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 Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien expresses the importance of a story-truth, as opposed to a happening-truth by use of literary elements in his writing. The novel is about war and the guilt it leaves on everyone involved in the war. Story-truth is not exactly what happened, but uses part of the truth and part made up in order to express the truth of what emotion was felt, which an important thematic element in the novel is. The three literary devices he uses to express this are diction, imagery, juxtaposition, and hyperbole. All of these elements allow the reader to identify emotion that is expressed in each story, as though that were the complete truth.

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

While the Vietnam War was a complex political pursuit that lasted only a few years, the impact of the war on millions of soldiers and civilians extended for many years beyond its termination. Soldiers killed or were killed; those who survived suffered from physical wounds or were plagued by PTSD from being wounded, watching their platoon mates die violently or dealing with the moral implications of their own violence on enemy fighters. Inspired by his experiences in the war, Tim O’Brien, a former soldier, wrote The Things They Carried, a collection of fictional and true war stories that embody the

            Tim O’Brien brings the characters and stories to life in The Things They Carried. He uses a writing style that brings stories to life by posing questions between the relationship of reality and fiction (Calloway 249). This is called metafiction and it exposes the truth through the literary experience. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction to make the characters and stories in The Things They Carried realistically evocative of the Vietnam War.

The novel, The Things They Carried is a story of one man’s accounts resulting to his tour of duty in Vietnam. Many of the men that are discussed in the book continued to be effected by the war, long after they returned home. Men were left emotionally scared, even if they managed to get out of the war physically unharmed. The

“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.

The Things They Carried is a breathtaking and captivating powerful war story memoir, which is beautifully and intensely well written by Tim O Brien. The novel explores the physical and emotional trauma of the Vietnam War and its impact on soldiers fears. The author and protagonist Tim O’ Brien communicates provoking nonlinear narratives or frame stories through his own point of view presenting the audience with a window into the disturbing widespread, endless, and meaningless death, violence, and savagery in war-torn Vietnam. The author cleverly uses different literary devices such as imagery, irony, symbolism, repetition and figurative language to grab the reader’s attention and convey his message and purpose for storytelling. By telling the haunting tragic stories of young soldiers whose lives were largely forgotten by society despite their opposition to the war and to reflect the real gripping emotional truth of what it was like to be a soldier in Vietnam and a veteran suffering from the memories of it. Through O’Brien vivid description of the war, which was such a significant event in American history, he distinguishes the physical, emotional and psychological aspect of war. The characters in the story are depicted memorably and their identities represent the different aspects of human nature and their struggle with guilt and purpose.

“The Things They Carried” shares many stories from the Vietnam War. The author Tim O’Brien often shares several perspectives about the war through his fellow brothers in arms. Often it seems to O’Brien the act of storytelling becomes more important than the stories told. The Vietnam War was a historical era marked by confusion and conflict, from the disagreement over the war to the inconsistent and unstructured war of attrition that soldiers were asked to fight.

The Things They Carried, a novel written by Tim O’Brien leads the readers to believe that a soldier’s imagination is a double-edged sword, both harmful and beneficial. This captivating story takes place during the Vietnam War. Through the story's narrator, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, readers get a feel for what the soldiers at that time had to endure. The book speaks of the mental and physical changes that happen to soldiers as days turn into months and months into years. Although the story occurs in Vietnam during the 1960s and early 1970s, its relevance is still apparent today with the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, the Department of Veteran Affairs stated that between 1990 and 2007 nearly 74,000 Americans died during

What would life be like if we had all been equal at the beginning and there was never any wars? Would there be more people on earth? Would be not be as technologically advanced as we are? . Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings emphasizes the hard, unacceptable life of being Negroes in a time when they weren’t superior to the rich whites. Tim O'Brien's novel The Things They Carried, accentuates the chaotic and misunderstood lives of the soldiers who fight for what they believe in. In theses novels. The authors uses the physical and emotional burdens or the characters to really present the themes of the novels to the reader.