Relating to Life Struggles Portrayed in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

"The Things They Carried" list the variety of things his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company brought on their missions. Several of these things cannot be seen, including guilt and fear, while others are specific physical objects, including matches, morphine, M-16 rifles, and M&M's candy.

Love is a powerful force, and Lieutenant Cross sometimes gets lost in his musings while thinking of Martha. O’Brien writes: “His mind wandered. He had difficulty keeping his attention on the war. On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the column, to keep their eyes open, but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing.” Like any sane person in his situation, Lieutenant Cross wants to escape – to anywhere else but the war. The war brings terrible experiences – fear, death, hunger, and pain beyond imagination. The only way that Lieutenant Cross can endure these things is by escaping to an imaginary life with Martha. Although to her, he is little more than a friend, to Lieutenant Cross, Martha represents innocence, perfection, and a world free from war.

Most stories about war show the glory of war and heroism of soldiers. According to OED, war is “a state of armed conflict between different nations or states or different groups within a nation or state”. But, what’s the definition about the stage of confusions in the soldier’s mind? A conflict between two nations or states can be resolved in a particular amount of time but can an experience from a person’s mind can ever be forgotten, can a person ever be able to resolve his own conflict: his fight with his emotions, changes, and his own mind? Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a powerful combination of fact and fiction; through description and imagination, O’Brien allows the reader to feel a soldier's hardships in the war and

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries courage. Unseemingly so, giving up someone he loves makes him the most courageous character in The Things They Carried. Martha, the woman whom he loves, is the most important thing back home, to him. “He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing he tongue had been there.” (1). This quote explains just how much Jimmy Cross loves Martha and he dreams about her everyday, Cross cares so much about Martha, the girl he fell in love with back at home. After fellow soldier Ted Lavender dies while Cross is daydreaming about Martha, he makes the honorary decision to

Harper Lee once said, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view”. Although, a very cliché phrase the meaning behind it stands consistently throughout the novel. Many novels purposes are to inform the audience, and it is much easier for the author to do this when he puts the audience in the characters shoes. Thomas C. Foster, in chapter 24 of How To Read Literature like a Professor, explains the importance of reading a novel through different points of views, in order to understand the social, historical, cultural, and personal background. In the novel “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses the technique of storytelling to give the audience a firsthand account of what life in the war was like.

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.

Take a step back in time and imagine what it would be like to be in the Vietnam War. Author, Tim O’Brien, has been through the Vietnam War and has seen first hand the horrors of the war. Throughout the book, The Things They Carried, O’Brien describes and informs what the war is really like and what goes through the soldier's mind. O’Brien includes the experiences he had with his unit focusing on men such as Norman Bowker, Lieutenant Cross, Kiowa, and Rat Kiley. O'Brien uses many different literary elements to explain what he has gone through and what the other soldiers have gone through as well during their time in the Vietnam War. O’Brien uses imagery to describe the Freedom Bird, the Tip Top Lodge, and the environment of Vietnam. O'Brien

In the previous chapter that I have read in the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the chapters that seem to be talking about after the war and seem like actual war stories would be “Speaking of Courage”, and “Notes.” Those two chapters stand out more, where the previous talk about life during the war and what is going on.

The common perspective of a wolf is a terrorist who kills innocent people and commits horrible crimes, however, horrific actions such as these are not the only things that can classify someone as a wolf. A wolf does not have to physically harm others in order to earn that title. It is not uncommon to be hurting emotionally and it has the potential to cause physical harm when taken too far. I believe that those who hurt innocent people emotionally are just as wolfly as those who physically harm others. Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried” is a unique novel composed of many short stories, all of which have the ability to be taken as individual short stories, or can be put together to form one long novel. These short stories focus on war, the real truth, the emotional truth, and the lies. There are many instances where the narrator, Tim O’Brien (not to be confused with the author), proves himself to be an extremely wolfly man through these stories. He illustrates, time and time again, his wolfly characteristics such as betrayal of his friends, manipulation of his readers’ emotions, and sheer fabrication of horrible stories.

His love for a woman caused bad decision making on his part. Cross could only think of Martha. “Lieutenant Cross gazed at the tunnel. But he was not there. He was buried with Martha under the white sand at the Jersey Shore…Vaguely, he was aware of how quiet the day was, he sullen paddies, yet he could not bring himself to worry about matters of security. He was beyond that. He was just a kid at war, in love” (O’brien 235). The death of Lavender made Cross come to a realization about his place in the war. He realized that his love for a woman that would never love him back caused him to be neglectful of what he was supposed to be thinking about. His men’s safety became his number one priority. Lavender’s death affected him in a way that no love letter from Martha could. “…Lieutenant Cross reminded himself that his obligation was not to be loved but to lead” (O’brien

The Vietnam War was the largest, most prolonged military conflict for the United States of America in world history, besides the recent war in Afghanistan. Many Vietnam veterans have written books and novels about their experiences, however, Tim O’Brien, an American who was drafted into the Vietnam war and an American writer, has written numerous books about his war experiences. In particular, Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, tells all his experiences in detail about the war, what it was like, and his friends he made because of the war. He reflects his feelings through war stories that are difficult to grasp as “true”. The Things They Carried depicts that the young soldiers had a bigger burden besides the heavy weight of their required SOP, or Standard Operating Procedure of luggage. O’Brien’s novel shows us his friends and his own personal experiences of love, hurt, friendship, and war and how they affect them emotionally and psychologically today, through the use storytelling and recalling flashbacks in their journey as soldiers in Vietnam at the time of war.

As the book by O'Brien The Things They Carried continue plus the short stories from Patriots, it made me think more and more about the purpose of the war and the consequences of the war on soldiers. The war started because of the political disagreements and because of that, people had to go and fight for their country's standpoint. According to the O'Brien book, when he is visiting Vietnam after the war, his daughter asked him: "This whole war, why was everybody so mad at everybody else?" and he answers her, "They weren't mad, exactly. Some people wanted one thing, other people wanted another thing (175)." The whole conflict was based on disagreement, that Vietnam wanted to be independent does not matter who is going to help them to reach

With over two million Americans serving in the Vietnam war there's well over two million breath taking war stories. The Things They Carried is a quick, inexpensive, powerful read writen by Tim O'brian and published by Houghton Mufflin. I would reccommend this book to anyone with enough time to read a meer 233 pages for only $15.95 at Barnes and Nobel. If you're debating whether or not to read this book, and believe me you wouldn't regret it, continue reading to learn more about this rousing book.

In the novel The Things They Carried, there are many events that lead to characters changing throughout the Vietnam war. Almost every character mentioned has something significant happen to them that changes them. Three characters that goes through major changes through the story are, Tim O’Brien, Jimmy Cross, and Mary Ann Bell.

The short story “The Things They Carried”, written by Tim O’Brien, is a story written in 1986 in the setting of the Vietnam War. The main character, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, is a young man who struggles with the battle of love while being away at war. Cross leads his men with the thought of Martha, the woman he loves, in the back of his head at nearly all times, which distracts him from the true harshness of the war. The list of the things the soldiers carry in O’Brien’s short story tell us what tangibles the men carry with them that are necessities for the battles, but they also carry intangibles with them such as the letters, and the dope to help comfort them in a time of fear. These possessions express the character of the men in the squad. All of the men in the squad carry something with them whether it is tangible or intangible that defines who they are. These things that the soldiers carry with them are not only items strapped on their shoulders but they are now a part of who they are during this period of time in their lives.