The Things They Carried by Tim O´Brien

Imagine one day you receive a mail from the government that you been draft to go a war at a different country. How would you feel if you know that purpose of this war is unreasonable in any senses? Angry, anxious or even confused. Vietnam War was “a personal failure on a national scale” (Hochgesang). There are many videos, documents and movies about the Vietnam War that show different angles of the Vietnam veterans’ experience and how the war really changes their life. In “The Things They Carried” written by Tim O’Brien, he argues about how the Vietnam War affect the soldiers in many ways, not only physically, but more important is the psychological effects before, during and after the war.

Following orders, digging a foxhole, carrying a twenty-three pound M-60 assault weapon, or chasing Charlie does not erase the virtues previously programmed. Typically related to ethics and the distinction between right and wrong, morality exists throughout The Things They Carried in many forms. In the book, even the most deranged characters manage to be kind to one another. When dealing with death, characters experiment with ways to respect and remember the dead. In foreign Vietnam, the soldiers deal with cultural differences and work to find a middle ground. In the book, Tim O’Brien illustrates how morality manages to survive amidst the gore of the Vietnam War.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, transports the reader into the minds of veterans of the Vietnam conflict. The Vietnam War dramatically changed Tim O’Brien and his comrades, making their return home a turbulent and difficult transition. The study, titled, The War at Home: Effects of Vietnam-Era Military Service on Post-War Household Stability, uses the draft lottery as a “natural experiment” on the general male population. The purpose of the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) study is to determine the psychological effects of the Vietnam War on its veterans. In order to do this, they tested four conditions, marital stability, residential stability, housing tenure, and extended family living. However, it

In Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried,” imagination is seen to be both beneficial and harmful. This novel consists of a story truth and a real truth. Tim O’Brien writes the book about the Vietnam War based primarily on his memory of the war. He does not remember every detail of the war, thus he makes up some false details to make the story seem more interesting. He does not only describe his own experiences, but also describe the experiences of other characters. He wants the readers to be able to feel and understand how he felt during the events of the story; he wants to provoke an emotional truth. O’Brien tries to prove that imagination is not completely a bad thing and that it is also a good thing. O’Brien starts to create stories about what could have happened in addition to the real war stories about himself and other characters’. With the power of imagination, O’Brien is able to talk about something that did not actually happen in his past. Imagination helps him escape reality and create a whole new life. Therefore, O’Brien uses imagination to do things that cannot be done in real life, to feel relieved, to confuse the readers on what is real and what is not, and to give the readers false belief.

In this final chapter, O’Brien strings the various threads of plot events together to form a cohesive message. Each of the major themes is illuminated as each of the major stories is retold mostly told about Vietnam and a younger version of himself

In the story The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien didn’t mention anything about traditional war heroes. I think this was a great idea, because there are no traditional war heroes. A traditional war hero is someone who is fearless and someone who can’t be harmed mentally or emotionally. But in The Things They Carried the soldiers out on the front lines were emotionally and physically scarred. Tim O’Brien didn’t write about traditional war heroes, O’Brien wrote about normal people, people with different views on the Vietnam war, and how the war affected these people.

Love is a powerful force, and Lieutenant Cross sometimes gets lost in his musings while thinking of Martha. O’Brien writes: “His mind wandered. He had difficulty keeping his attention on the war. On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the column, to keep their eyes open, but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing.” Like any sane person in his situation, Lieutenant Cross wants to escape – to anywhere else but the war. The war brings terrible experiences – fear, death, hunger, and pain beyond imagination. The only way that Lieutenant Cross can endure these things is by escaping to an imaginary life with Martha. Although to her, he is little more than a friend, to Lieutenant Cross, Martha represents innocence, perfection, and a world free from war.

In “Lives of the Dead”, O’Brien’s own innocence is preserved through the memory of Linda, a memory that remains untarnished by the inevitable corruption that results from life. O’Brien’s writings “save Linda’s life. Not her body--her life” (236). Storytelling and memories preserve the value of Linda’s existence while simultaneously allowing O’Brien to process death and destruction in a way that maintains a degree of optimism regarding his own life and future. Juxtaposing the images of body and life emphasizes his desire to save the idea of Linda while accepting the loss of her physical presence. O’Brien rejects the idea of death as absolute and final; instead he suggests that “once you are alive, you can never be dead” (244). Linda’s death solidifies her importance in O’Brien’s own development; she teaches him about life and real love as much as in death as in life. O’Brien’s paradoxical statement defines the lasting impact of Linda on him; her presence in his stories keeps her alive through memory; memories that even her death

“At the girl’s throat was a necklace of human tongues. Elongated and narrow, like pieces of blackened leather, the tongues were threaded along a length of copper wire, one tongue overlapping the next, the tips curled upward as if caught in a final shrill syllable,” (O’Brien 105-106). This is an extreme example taken from Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, specifically from a story titled “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong.” A story of a once-naive civilian woman who, in the process of becoming a soldier in the traditional role of a man in combat, evolves into more than a mere soldier. Throughout history, many women were known to disguise themselves as men in combat. Now, they do not have to disguise themselves. The roles of women have dramatically changed in recent years. Women were not allowed to have an education. They did not attend high school or college, and they were expected to just be the typical housewife of the mid-1900’s. Some women had children while men were typical “bread-winners.” That is how the world was at that point in time. As you can see already, men and women were not equal in the minds of others. In the military, the differences between men and women are physical appearances. Women did not have the same muscle strength as men did; they certainly had strength, but could not run as fast as men in 50-80 pound gear, along with other things that could be a challenge. So why would they want to be a part of that? It is simple: equality. For some,

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.

Life can come to a stop sometimes when a person is weighed down by burdens. For some people it may be too difficult to live in the present while constantly thinking about the past and because of this are unable to move on. These can be burdens that they have been carrying for a long time or even recently. In the short story, “The Things They Carried,”Tim O’Brien uses symbolism, ambiguity, and a non-linear narrative structure to illustrate emotional burdens.

Othering is the social outcasting of those who are different then the masses. This is the justification behind such events as the holocaust, segregation and assimilation. Today many books illustrate this. The book The Things They Carried,Tim O’Brian portrayed a character named Mary in the Sweetheart Song of Tra Bong. In Muas authored by Art Spiegelman the jews are othered in the most horrific way. Cristina Henriquez in her novel The Book of Unknown Americans she depicts the character Maribel is other because of her mental disability.

The protagonist, who is named Tim O’Brien, begins by describing an event that occurred in the middle of his Vietnam experience. “The Things They Carried” catalogs the variety of things his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company brought on their missions. Several of these things are intangible, including guilt and fear, while others are specific physical objects, including matches, morphine, M-16 rifles, and M&M’s candy. Tim O’Brien, the narrator and protagonist of the collection of stories. O’Brien is a pacifist who rationalizes his participation in Vietnam by concluding that his feelings of obligation toward his family and country are stronger influences than his own politics. When the war is over, he uses his ability to tell stories to deal with his guilt and confusion over the atrocities he witnessed in Vietnam, including the death of several of his fellow soldiers and of a Viet Cong soldier by his own hand. Throughout the collection, the same characters reappear in various stories. The first member of the Alpha Company to die is Ted Lavender, a “grunt,” or low-ranking soldier, who deals with his anxiety about the war by taking tranquilizers and smoking marijuana."Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should have done." (Chapter 1, pg. 5) Lavender is shot in the head on his way back from going to the bathroom, and his superior, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, blames himself for the tragedy. When Lavender is shot, Cross is distracting himself with

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.

George Carlin, during the early 80’s, had a routine that was a witticism on the importance of having "personal effects". These “personal effects” or items that a person accumulates through life symbolize their identity. The impractical things carried in pockets, purses, bags and suitcases that make people feel "as themselves" while in strange surroundings. These things are so essential to identify the person these “personal effects” represents. If asked how to identify someone it would take on a completely different meaning. Name, social security number and birth dates are the items mostly associated with someone’s Identity. This phenomenon can be oppressed by the replacement of possessions by removing the things that make a person feel complete and replacing them with items that represent a new identity. Tim O’Brien’s story entitled “The Things We Carried” illustrates how people carry objects that represent their identity. Some objects are tangible like weapons and items for personal protections and other are intangible like fear and guilt. No matter how or what these objects are they hold the key to one’s identity. This story gives us an introspect of an unfamiliar person’s identity is through physical characteristic, mannerisms, or the objects that used for personal reassurance.