Summary Of Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

O'Brien's The Things They Carried O’Connor remarks “The Things They Carried” is a short story that is written “as an experience not an abstraction” and that “the meaning has been embodied in it”. These quotations are truly pure in description and interpretation of the short story as the reader, must look beyond the crude physical properties of the objects and actions chronicled and focus more upon their hidden meanings and messages. O’Brien uses the physical characteristics of weight to make an impact upon the reader to relate with the men. In emphasizing the soldier’s everyday burden, the reader can easily relate to the situation in general. As the story progresses, the main attention of the

This book is an actual war story where it has numerous of stories about his experiences. But under all those harsh stories and events lies one of the most powerful forces, and that is love. Could it be that instead these stories are based on love and not war? When I say love I do not mean that they are all homosexual but rather they are best friends, battle buddies, loyal to each other. They may get into fights but they all have each others back at the end of the day and I’m going to go through three characters and how they connected with the author, Tim O’Brien.

Many may question the true meaning of love. However, there is not an exact description. According to Merriam-Webster, The full definition of love is “a (1): strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties-maternal love for a child (2): attraction based on sexual desire: affection and tenderness felt by lovers (3): affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests”. Love played a role in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is the platoon leader. While stationed in the Vietnam, Lieutenant Cross was infatuated with Martha. He used his memory and imagination to escape from the scenes from the war.

There are two types of people that fight in wars; those who consider their patriotic duty an honor and those who entered the war by force. In 1990, twenty years after returning from the Vietnam War, Tim O’Brien published The Things They Carried, a disturbing and remorseful collection of short stories that gives detailed, yet fictional, accounts of the horrific events that occurred during the war. Later in 2012, after his tour of duty, Chris Kyle released American Sniper, a humble and passionate memoir that describes what Kyle had to face during his tour. While The Things They Carried utilizes symbolism and similes to inform the reader about the horrors of war, American Sniper uses flashbacks and imagery to demonstrate that some people “come alive” during the war.

War is only experienced by those brave enough to enter and endure the hardships of it, and is difficult to understand what it means to step foot on the battlefield and suffer through it. In the first chapter of the novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O’brien, a group of soldiers are making their way through Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and go through many physical and mental hardships. These hardships are very difficult for most people to understand, so the author addresses them. Throughout the chapter, the author is able to show the correlation between war and love through his descriptive, symbolistic lists and the character Martha, a woman loved by one of the soldiers.

     How does death affect the behavior of people? Although death affects everyone's behavior differently, knowledge of one's imminent death is a main force behind behavioral changes. This knowledge causes emotions that motivate people to act in ways that they normally would not. In Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried,'; the knowledge of death and its closeness causes the men in the story to alter their behavior by changing they way they display power, modifying emotions to relieve guilt, and by exhibiting different actions to ease anxiety.

In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried the issue of maturity is an ever occurring theme within the novel that sets out to tackle and open up for discussion of it on a broader level. Specifically within the chapters "Friends" and "Enemies" it is clear that both Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen are wedged in a personal psychological war. This issue faces many young adults but is perverted by the war and the tragic loss of innocent life. Many feel that the purpose of O'Brien's The Things They Carried is to show hardships and reality of war. While that is true, the most important issue and debate brought up is the rapid transformation of our young soldiers while they have to face the atrocities of war. Although, Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen

“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.

In the story "The Things They Carried" Tim voices that the mental burdens outweigh all of the physical pain and weakness. Many of soldiers carried the emotional baggage of the men who will die. The emotional baggage that the soldiers carry such as fear, grief, and love; these were all intangible but carried lots of mass and weight on the soldiers. The fear and the responsibilities far outweigh all of the physical torture that the soldiers must endure in order to stay alive, each soldier has a little bit of hope that they may return home.

In the story “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien explores the themes of the emotional and physical objects soldiers in Vietnam carried along with them on their marches. Some men carried more ammunition because they were scared, others carried letters from their loved ones. Lieutenant Cross, who is perceived to be the protagonist of the story carries the responsibility of his platoon. He spends most of his days fantasizing about a girl he loves from back home, Martha and it’s not until Ted Lavender is shot in the head that he now has to carry the grief of being responsible for his death. Meanwhile, a fellow member of the platoon, Kiowa, admires the lieutenant's capacity for grief, since his emotional response to Lavender’s death is just surprise.

It took Tim O'Brien 20 years after the war was done for him to write the novel The Things They Carried. When O’Brien wrote the novel the things they carried, he had to relive everything he went through. The purpose of writing this novel was to let everyone that was not there themselves know what it was like on a person. O’Brien was the protagonist and the antagonist is the war in Vietnam. When O’Brien wrote this novel his intended audience was people that were not in the Vietnam War. The novel was more mortality and death but, also has shame and guilt a lot throughout the story.

soldiers and what they experienced. He tells us that these stories he has written may be true or may not be. In the chapters “How to Tell a True War Story and “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” he presents them as true because all of these details and the things he tells us.To make up this stuff is unreal and he tells us in the two stories that if the soldiers who went to Vietnam make it and come back alive they are never the same again.

“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.

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.

While most of these items were “largely determined by necessity” to aid them in their survival, other items involved personal items for comfort and support. The survival items involved things like guns, jackets, C rations and knives which altogether weighted around 65 pounds excluding the many other items men carried for comfort. These involved letters, pictures of loved ones, panty hose for Henry Dobbins, and tranquilisers for Ted Lavender which they claimed had the properties of “good luck charms” and helped ease the tension and pressure at war. While the things they carried where also determined by a “man’s habits or the rate of metabolism”, this “humping” became their nightmare after the war as they remembered the pain from the weight. Jimmy Cross, is the Lieutenant of the platoon, carried a “compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45-caliber pistol which weighted 2.9 pounds when loaded”, plus a strobe light. Further he carried the personal items which included Martha’s letters, pictures and a good luck pebble which all provided a distraction from the war responsibilities and pressures. However when Ted Lavender is killed, Cross burns Martha’s pictures and letter blaming her to be the distraction which cost him Lavender’s death. While the platoon members, such as Norman Bowker, carried letter and diaries from loved ones. Norman, whose father “had his own war”,