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.

The story of Things they carried written by author Tim O’Brien is the story of a group of young men who served during the war in Vietnam. The story explains the physical and mental burdens of war, carried by each individual, for the battle, their love, and their superstitious beliefs. Of the group, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, their leader, was a young man who carried the heaviest load. First Lieutenant Cross was often distracted by thoughts of a girl named Martha, whom he had met before the war. Martha was a college student in New Jersey who had sent Lieutenant Cross letters and good luck charms. Though Martha’s intentions were innocent, Lieutenant Cross never understood them that way, as a matter of fact, he often fantasized about Martha

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.

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED written by Tim O’Brien. This book is based on his experience in the Vietnam War. It’s about what actually he did during the Vietnam. Some parts of the book are really cruel and depressing. This is the third book of Tim O’Brien about the Vietnam War. He uses really stressful way to explain how cruel was the war. It’s also a true portrayal of American soldiers’ life in Vietnam. War always change a people so fast, because it’s either death or survive. I think when you can’t avoid something, just enjoy them instead. Take some memorable moments before you are dead would be interesting. “Irony mixed with tragedy, and destroy the reality of death itself. They kicked corpses. They cut off thumbs.” page 19. In this page O’Brien

Many people lack the understanding of the burdens, or the dangers associated with lack of focus, in battle, and the emotional baggage gained by these wars. Many times, during major wars, the majority of soldiers are younger adults, so they are naïve to many experiences, and they are forced to ignore those traumatic experiences. As a result, of war and those experiences, many are lucky to come back alive, but even those who survive, still suffer deep emotional wounds and have emotional problems. Therefore, Soldiers who are successful in returning safe, make an effort to stay focused on the moment, because when they lose mental focus they will die. Similarly, in the story The Things they Carried, by Tim O’Brien, he tells of the baggage associated

“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.

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