The Things They Carried Literary Analysis Essay

With this in mind, O’Brien describes many equipment the soldiers carry to the Vietnam War, such as weapons, sentimental items, food and most significant; their “emotional baggage”. He states that “They carried the shameful memories. They carried the common secret cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide… this was

They carry many things, they carry a massive amount of weight on their shoulders. However, the heaviest thing that they carry cannot be touched. The intangible weight of fear, loss, anger, and guilt far outweigh any tangible item that they could possibly possess. The Thing They Carried is not only an eye-opening collection of war stories, but it is also a love story, a memoir, and a tribute to the unimaginable things that happen to our soldiers in war zones. War changes men, makes them different, and when they come home they are not the same person and they often have trouble readjusting to the life of a civilian.

O’Brien was confused about death when his girlfriend died, he felt so strongly for her even at a young age. He would daydream about her and this kept her alive in his mind. He realized that storytelling and imagination could keep the dead alive. The way he deals with her death helps him to deal with death during Vietnam and later the stories help him to deal with the difficulties he’s had in life.

The Vietnam War began in 1954, consisting of many extensive, horrific years of battle that seemed to create more harm to the United States and its soldiers rather than to North Vietnam. The 500,000 United States military personnel returned home with the loss of the war and the loss of their friends on their minds. Although the physical and emotional experiences that the men went through is unfathomable, Tim O’Brien does a great job portraying what life as a soldier was truly like in the Vietnam War. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien depicts the unstable emotional and psychological condition of the American soldiers through the symbolism of their belongings and personal anecdotes from their lives.

The Things They Carried is a book about Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his platoon of soldiers that describes what they carried along the entire Vietnam war, whether it was physical, or mental these men had to endure it all year long. One way or another, whether

The exaggeration that O'Brien expresses in his story, also known as hyperbole, gives the reader a feeling of speaking with a man that just experienced the war of his life an hour before you two are speaking. The emotion is

20) O’Brien tells how these young men were drafted which were constantly in fear, they wished to be there obliviously but war takes up all of one’s attention; it played a big role in their life, changing their tactics, personality and becoming a new person. O’Brien uses this to show the stressful moments in war where one has pressure to be alive and in this case to fit in with everyone else and feel part of something, in a lonely place such as the war.

            Tim O’Brien brings the characters and stories to life in The Things They Carried. He uses a writing style that brings stories to life by posing questions between the relationship of reality and fiction (Calloway 249). This is called metafiction and it exposes the truth through the literary experience. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction to make the characters and stories in The Things They Carried realistically evocative of the Vietnam War.

In "The Things They Carried," O'Brien made reference to the Vietnam war that was closely associated with the physical, psychological, and emotional weight the soldiers beared.  The overall method of presentation of this story incorporated many different outlooks on the things the soldiers carried, dealt with, and were forced to adapt to.  In addition to this, O'Brien showed us the many reasons why and how the soldiers posessed these things individually and collectively and how they were associated directly and indirectly.  The strong historical content in "The Things They Carried" helped emphasize the focus of the story and establish a clearer understanding of details in the

The men who were in Tim O’Brien’s platoon caught on quickly, if they talked about everything that was going on as if it was only a story, their lives became a little easier. It became easier even for the men who didn’t practically like the guy who died. In the war it wasn’t about liking one another, that didn’t matter, what mattered to them was expressing their grief without showing it. “In any case, it’s easy to get sentimental about the dead, and to guard against it” (82). Being able to guard against their grief was something that was hard for many. No matter how many stories they told, there was still a sadness that some of them never could get over. The death of Kiowa was one of those impossible to get over. His death impacted everyone in the platoon. Even though Kiowa was just their guide, they treated him like he was a part of their family of misfits. Every man in the platoon had a story for Kiowa. There was some who told people stories that had Kiowa never dying, there were two however where his death left such a huge impact on them. All they

The Things They Carry: The Weight of Life Tim O’Brien’s story “The Things They Carried” follows a young Tim O’Brien through the horrors of the Vietnam War, feeling a sense of weight as he humps his gear across the battlefield as well as delves into the lives of the characters which are somehow thrown together in one of life’s most truly unique situations. Although a short excerpt, the reader is taken along on a journey of love, loss, and sacrifice. The reader is drawn into the story as young O’Brien flees to Canada. The reader can hear the roar of the artillery and planes flying overhead, as well as the awful stillness of the night; that eerie spooky stillness that comes with all the unknowns that are present only in the darkness. A little

In “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, it is evident that the psychological impact of what the soldiers went through was heavier than all of the supplies and equipment they carried. Wartime can be much harder on some men than others, it is a true test of resilience. Some soldiers were driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to have a reason to continue to fight. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery. Sadly, it is not until the completion of the story where Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is brought back to reality by the tragic death of his soldier and friend, Ted Lavender, and ready to face the tasks

In The Things They Carry, O'Brien suggests that the Vietnam war caused psychological trauma to young American's drafted into the war. He does this through his descriptions of objects and their weight, Lieutenant Cross' battle between love and duty, and the manner in which Ted Lavender's death is presented to the reader.

The story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is an enormously detailed fictional account of a wartime scenario in which jimmy Cross (the story’s main character) grows as a person, and the emotional and physical baggage of wartime are brought to light. The most obvious and prominent feature of O’Brien’s writing is a repetition of detail. O’brien also passively analyzes the effects of wartime on the underdeveloped psyche by giving the reader close up insight into common tribulations of war, but not in a necessarily expositorial sense.. He takes us into the minds of mere kids as they cope with the unbelievable and under-talked-about effects or rationalizing

There are many different type of elements for literary analysis. Some are plot, setting, characterization, protagonist vs antagonist and the list goes on. Each one gives the story its own meaning and connects to the main idea of the story. Two stories that I will be talking about today, each introduce their own element of literary analysis. The two stories I chose are “A Pair of Tickets” by Amy Tan and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien.