The Things They Carried By Tim O ' Brien

There are both physical and emotional things that way people down in everyday life. In war there are even more responsibility that each person has to deal with. You have the physical responsibility of the men around you but also the emotional baggage that comes alone with that. In the story “The Things They Carried,” Lieutenant Jimmy Cross has the big responsibility of keeping his all his men safe, and he feels like Ted Lavenders death is his fault so the weight of these two things weighs him down a lot. Everyone has things that way them down, some more than others but that doesn’t mean that it effects everyone in the same way.

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

In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the man is drafted into the Vietnam War where he faces many obstacles mentally and physically. The characters are heavily impacted by the war’s power and try to find ways within themselves to escape its brutality. The author uses language and character’s reactions to their inner conflicts to illustrate the mental stresses that arise in war.

For the seventeen Soldiers portrayed in “The Things We Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the physical pain was very minimal weight to carry compared to the emotional scars that they will carry throughout their entire life. This story does an amazing job portraying full human emotion that anyone put into a situation would feel, such as heavy guilt, sadness, anger, lack of motivation, perseverance, horror, and false security. All of these are notorious feelings that every soldier back in history, and now still feel when they are on a mission. “The Things They carried” shows a deep vulnerability of everyday human’s thought process during times of great stress, that before, wasn’t considered by the general public and media when speaking about what it

In “the things they carried” the author Tim O´ Brien described in detail all the physical weight soldiers carry, however, mental stresses are heavier.

Leaving soldiers as a shell of a human being, the torment of war is everlasting. Despite being off the battlefield, soldiers suffer from mental and physical distress long after the war is over. Soldiers have to relearn how to participate in society, and for some the impact of war destroys the concept of normal life altogether. The pain and sorrow of soldiers can be put into words through rhetorical devices. These devices, through the use of specific language, describe in detail the ways in which war physically and mentally changed soldiers. Further stressing this change, rhetorical devices reveal that once a soldier is deployed the concept of normalcy is destroyed. The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien perfectly demonstrates through

The war does not only leaves physical lifetime scars on a soldier but also mental scars which could remain with him for lifetime. We can say that the person who suffers the most is the soldier because he is the one who goes through continuous pain. After seeing so much destruction the soldiers go insane, they go through mental illness and psychological trauma, they try to attempt suicide, they get flashbacks of those disastrous events that stops them to live a normal life after. “We’re all strange, Robert thought. Everyone is strange in a war I guess. Ordinary is a myth" (Findley 101). As the wars are so anxious soldiers fight for days, weeks and months without sleeping, eating, bathing; they lack basic nessecties of life. As Robert states, "All he [Robert] wanted was a dream. Escape. But nobody dreams on a battlefield. There isn't any sleep that long. Dreams and distances are the same" ( Findley 102) a soldier cannot fall asleep because of the terror and stressful conditions but if he does he could get killed. they do not live a regular routine life which

War is courage. War is sacrifice. War is heroism, to the outsiders at least. To the young men fighting for their country daily, a decision that is far beyond their control, war strikes entirely different emotions in their minds. In Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried,” he reveals that soldiers carry much more than meets the eye. Yes, soldiers carry loads of physical items needed for survival, but what about the emotional and psychological aspects war leaves for the young soldiers to carry in their minds? In this segment of O’Brien’s novel, he exposes that what these young men experience in their time at war changes them forever. A soldier before and after the war are two completely different people, simply because war is powerful, and it has the ability to alter your mind and feelings permanently. O’Brien shows this through themes of distraction, guilt, and lost love.

Before I read this book, I had a limited understanding – it’s still limited due to the fact that I’m not a soldier, nor have I fought in a war – of how those who fight these wars for us are truly affected by the actions required. When we think of a soldier returning from war, we think of them as a hero, which they are, but we fail to think of how they’re could be feeling about the things they had to do. We fail to understand that PTSD is real and common in many soldiers; we fail to understand that we shouldn’t treat them as a “ticking time bomb” , but rather a fellow citizen that needs our help and understanding. We fail to see them as anything more than a soldier; we fail to see their humanity. This book opens up this disconnect a little more. Though the characters are fictional, we are still able to see real feelings that soldier face during and after the war, thanks to O’Brien’s experience. Though there still isn’t a perfect understanding of these feelings that soldiers face after war, the book has helped me to understand just how big this disconnect is. Though these feelings very well could be felt after any war that the nation has fought in, I feel like disconnect between veterans and civilians was broadened after soldiers returned from Vietnam. Civilians had seen on the television, for the first time,

There is only one kind of truth, no matter what author Tim O’Brien may think and say in his novel The Things They Carried. As he explains it, story-truth is more of a way to allow someone to comprehend what he went through or felt. Then, what he calls happening-truth is the nut-and-bolt facts of what really happened. But I find serious fault with his definition. Story-truth is not truth. It is not what happened, it is just a way to lie about what really happened. Happening-truth is what really happened. He states several times that a true war story does not seem true, but the untrue war stories seem the truest.

Emotions and instincts are impossible to predict at any given moment. You simply cannot tell yourself to be strong and courageous and expect it to play out that way. Most civilians do not understand what causes cowardice and why soldiers cannot overcome it, “Yet cowardice, a subset of shame, is a moral category, and all such categories insofar as they constitute a piece in the great unsolved puzzle of what constitutes human nature, are worthy of a study in and of themselves” (Walsh, Chris). Tim O’Brien starts the novel listing all of the soldier’s items that they carried, but the audience has come to recognize that it is not the tangible, but the intangible things they truly weigh them down. When reading The Things They Carried it is important to look past the horrific scenarios of the war but rather notice the underlying problem throughout the story between a battle of courage and cowardice.

One example of how the soldiers were affected mentally was when the soldiers lost all hope after the war was over. For example, O’Brien stated "Now, the war ended, all I am left with are simple, unprofound scraps of truth. Men die. Fear hurts and humiliates" (pg 23). The soldiers found out the hard, dark truth about war. They had different views about the war and came out with about one view, the war was not bad until you know when all the truth about it. Another example of how the war affected the soldier mentally was when they reflected on all the things they did, making them change their mind about the war. For instance, O’Brien expressed, “But, still, none of these notions seem right. Men are killed, dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are afraid and often brave, drill sergeants are boors, some men think the war is proper and just and others don't and most don't care.” Many soldiers have different views on the war, but after all, they have done their view on the war starts getting dark. Another example of how the war affected the soldiers mentally through the war was when they wouldn’t care anymore about what would happen to them. For instance, O’Brien expressed “Some guys are just numb to death” (131). This explains that some soldiers were so done with the war that they thought they were bulletproof in a way that they

In the novel, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien there is an ambiguity assigned to the life of a soldier in the Vietnam war, an ambiguity that represents no clear moral victor, no clear heroes, and seemingly no end. In the movie, Platoon, written and directed by Oliver Stone, the same ambiguity is depicted, with no clear moral direction, no clear heroes, and no clear resolution. In the short story, “How to Tell a True War Story,” O’Brien talks in great detail about how a true war story, and not some reimagining, “is never moral” (O’Brien) and “cannot be believed” (O’Brien). According to O’Brien, the movie Platoon will qualify as a true war story because it is not moral, hard to believe, and has no clear resolution.

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

War has affected many soldiers around the world. War generally has a negative effect on the people and the societies involved. These texts provide examples of the negative effects of war and how it has impacted soldiers lives; ‘Hero of war by Rise against’, ‘Dulce et decorum est by Owen Wilfred’, ‘Rambo - First Blood by Ted Kotcheff’ and ‘The Patriot by Ted Kotcheff’. All of the soldiers in these texts are suffering from ‘emotional scarring’ as a result of what happened during the war. There are many different negative effects of war, such as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and regret.