Summary: The Things They Carried By Tim 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.

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.

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.

The Things They Carried is a book that was written by Tim O'Brien who discussed his experiences in the Vietnam war. He did not want to go to war, but he had no choice except leaving the United State to live in Canada, but if he went to Canada he would never be allowed to come back to the United States because he would be a criminal. However, O’Brien feared that people would call him a coward. In the The Things They Carried O’Brien demonstrate that stories have the ability to pass heroic action and moral dilemma.

In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the author emphasizes on the items to tell the story. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters and a rock from Martha. In the war, Cross would focus on his love towards Martha to carry him out through his days and his sufferings. All the men carried something to get their minds off the war. They did not want to be cowards, so they stuck it out and moved on. They used these items to motivate them. For the letters Cross states, “They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that love was only a way of signing…” (p.366). Martha just added to the illusion to Cross. She never mentioned the war and never said she loved him. She just kept teasing him. However, Cross just kept “humped” his

At different points in our lives we change, but are we always the same person? Most would say yes, even though we grow up and our appearances change we mainly keep our values and ways of thinking. Tim O’Brien the author of The Things They Carried tackles the idea of changing personalities and thought processes, by writing different stories about his friends from the war. He argues that the trauma from experiencing literal and metaphorical death can turn you into a completely different person.

The narrator in “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy is a soldier that killed someone and the narrator in “The Things They Carried” is Tim O’ Brien who writes about his own experiences in Vietnam. I like Tim O’ Brien’s writing because it reminds me of movies like “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket”. I love movies like those and as I read “The Things they carried” my head flows with war movies and I imagine the book is a war movie in its self. On the other hand I am not a fan of Thomas Hardy “The Man He killed”. I personally believe the poem is weak and it doesn’t seem like there is any effort into it. I do give him credit because I don’t know if I could manage to have something as simple as pointing and shooting someone into five stanzas. Death on the other hand has different effects on people.

With today’s political climate and distrust of media, the word fact is quite possibly at its most uncertain point in recent years. It is word meant to convey the details of what actually occurred, objectively and wholly. However, contention over facts is nothing new to the world, as some would argue that facts are not always the most important part of a story. This is exemplified by the narrator Tim O’Brien, Tim O’Brien’s projection of his own Vietnam war experiences in his novel The Things They Carried. O’Brien explores the importance of facts in stories meant to convey truths about a situation. I believe that taking creative liberties in the telling of stories is useful to convey truth of a situation. However, I also believe that if one strays

Tim O’Brien wrote a collection of related short stories titled The Things They Carried, that follows a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War and when they return to their homes. Throughout the novel, O’Brien uses real names and includes himself, as the protagonist, to create a style that ebbs and flows from fiction to non-fiction without realization. According to Kathleen Laura MacArthur, it is “through this process and these stylistic innovations, the reader might then experience this trauma secondhand and, perhaps, relate this trauma to one’s own personal traumatic experience” (26). At first, the reader is introduced to the narrator First Lieutenant Tim O’Brien; he begins to talk about his love for a woman named Martha and how he carries her letters and good-luck pebble with him. As O’Brien continues, he explains all the various things the men of the company carry. In most cases, these “things” are physical objects and depend on factors such as the individual’s priorities and necessities. In addition, he talks about items that are universal among the men, such as mosquito repellent, chewing gum, matches, C rations and a multi-use poncho. These possessions serve as an opportunity for us to see into the emotional burdens each soldier carries. As the title of this novel refers to the things, or “weight,” the soldiers carry, the soldiers are changed from lively, young people to hardened and cold throughout the war by the tragic events they go through, tasks they must

“By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining the masks of composure” (21). In Tim O’brien’s The Things They Carried, the American soldiers of the Vietnam War carry much more than the weight of their equipment, much more than souvenirs or good-luck charms or letters from home. They carried within themselves the intransitive burdens—of fear, of cowardice, of love, of loneliness, of anger, of confusion. Most of all, they carry the truth of what happened to them in the war—a truth that only those who fought in the jungles and the mountains and the marshes of Vietnam can ever understand. These men can share their stories; but all that’s all they are to everyone else: stories.

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.

In the short story, “On the Rainy River” his book The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien shows the internal conflict he has with himself about entering the Vietnam War. He gets drafted into a war that he hates, and he battles himself on whether or not he wants to fight. He feels like a coward for deciding to fight, but then has to deal with putting his family through the pain and stress of possibly not making it through the war. While O’Brien struggles with his moral convictions against the war, he determines to fight in the Vietnam War to protect his family and defend their honor.

In the story “The Things They Carried” the author Tim O’Brien uses powerful imagery, figurative language and repetition to spread his message. O’Brien’s reason behind telling the story was to show the way the Vietnam war was, and to remind society of those forgotten soldiers that gave their lives for their country. The Vietnam war was a pointless war for the U.S to be involved in, and many young men were sent to Vietnam, regardless of any feelings of negativity they may have had about the war. Many of the participants of the war was under the impression that it was wrong to be sent to war as it was basically a death sentence. Unfortunately, no one realized that the young

A young male, First Lieutenant, in the Army will unintentionally become a man as men server under him. Becoming a man with such unspeakable responsibilities at such a young age can emotionally test even the strongest man. An example, of this transformation is in the short story by Tim O’Brien called, “The Things They Carried.” It shows a young, First Lieutenant, in the Vietnam War named Jimmy Cross, and his journey to become a successful leader, but only after the death of one of his men. There must be order at all times, and Lt. Cross must become capable of setting aside his own personal mind-set and align his thoughts with that of the essential standard operating procedures (SOP). Lt. Cross eventually

The Things They Carried by author Tim O'Brien is a work of war literature that combines fact and fiction in a collection of memoirs, autobiograpy, and stories related to the foot soldiers' experiences, fears, and feelings that happened during the Vietnam War .1