Soldiers In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien created several allusions that each character endured during the Vietnam War. Throughout the story were vast representations of the things the soldiers carried both mentally and physically. The things they carried symbolized their individual roles internally and externally. In addition to the symbolism, imagination was a focal theme that stood out amongst the characters. This particular theme played a role as the silent killer amongst Lt. Cross and the platoon both individually and collectively as a group. The theme of imagination created an in depth look of how the war was perceived through each character which helped emphasize their thoughts from an emotional standpoint of being young men out at war.

In this chapter he faces the splitting conflict between the guilt of avoiding the war and the guilt of killing other humans, resulting in him to feel like a coward in both decisions. Due to his fear of the law, he chose to go to war, because he knew societal pressures controlled a moral influence that overpowered his own aversion to the war. At the end he says, “I was a coward. I went to the war,” (O’Brien 61) indicating that because of the guilt and rejection he would face if he didn’t go to the war, he made the decision even though he thought it wasn’t the right thing to do.

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

There are two types of people that fight in wars; those who consider their patriotic duty an honor and those who entered the war by force. In 1990, twenty years after returning from the Vietnam War, Tim O’Brien published The Things They Carried, a disturbing and remorseful collection of short stories that gives detailed, yet fictional, accounts of the horrific events that occurred during the war. Later in 2012, after his tour of duty, Chris Kyle released American Sniper, a humble and passionate memoir that describes what Kyle had to face during his tour. While The Things They Carried utilizes symbolism and similes to inform the reader about the horrors of war, American Sniper uses flashbacks and imagery to demonstrate that some people “come alive” during the war.

This quote in the first chapter of the book sets the overall tone. The author Tim O’Brien uses his language through out the book in an extremely straightforward manner. He does not sugar coat the way going to war and being in a war is. He does not use stories of heroes,

"The Things They Carried" list the variety of things his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company brought on their missions. Several of these things cannot be seen, including guilt and fear, while others are specific physical objects, including matches, morphine, M-16 rifles, and M&M's candy.

In the story, “The Things They Carried”, author Tim O’Brien described specific items that each of his soldiers carried with them to the Vietnam War front. The items that the soldiers carried were for mental protection; they believed that the things they carried would take their minds off all the terror and violence that was going on around them. The protagonist, Lieutenant Jimmy cross, carries out letters from a girl named Martha, which leads to him losing his focus for the war and a lack of protection for his fellow soldiers. The death of Ted Lavender tested Lieutenant Cross’ loyalty to his men, his imagination of Martha, and the significance relating to each of the items the soldiers’ carry.

First, the reader must understand just what makes a good "war story". The protagonist of the novel, Tim O'Brien, gives us his

The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brein, is a story told through the eyes of members of a United States Army troop trudging their way through the Vietnamese country side and jungles during the Vietnam War. Each man has a specific job and so they carry specific belongings that they need to fulfill that job as well as a few mementos from home. These men also carry unseen baggage that is all too real to these men, their families and responsibilities back home preying on their minds, the horrors of war, and the stress of the importance of fulfilling their duties to keep then men around them alive.

The horrific war of Vietnam consisted of many different people that were able to bring with them pieces and items that helped them survive throughout the battle. In the novel, The Things They Carried, by Tim O' Brien, symbolic items that were both physical and literal were carried and shown throughout the story from the characters of Jimmy Cross, Notman Baker, and Kiowa. Items specifically consisted of things like letters and photos of a woman named Martha that were given to Cross, a hatchet, and a diary which was carried by Bowker. The items that they kept close to them represented their true colors, as the book reveals to the reader how significant these objects were to these characters. Soldiers were allowed to carry such items to the battle,

In the story The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien uses literary devices such as imagery and repetition to show how conflict impact humanity in ways of making people care for who they have and how long they have them.

Tim O’Brien starts the book The Things They Carried with a chapter that literally tells the audience what each soldier carries. This ranges from mandatory equipment to sentimental items. These sentimental items also indicate the figurative things that the soldiers carry. The first chapter is all about O’Brien stating which man in the unit carries the guns and radios.

In June of 1968, O’Brien was “drafted to fight a war I hated,” (O’Brien 38). The shock of being drafted made him consider fleeting to Canada. It isn’t long before he overcomes “the test of courage,”

Throughout the the novel, the reader follows Tim O’Brien during his tour as a soldier in the Vietnam War. The novel follows Tim O’Brien through his tour of Vietnam, and consists of intertwining vignettes of several incidents that occurred while in Vietnam. A handful of these stories that O’Brien retells prove to be untrue, or at least contain untruths. This leaves the reader with an uncertain feeling toward the exactness of this novel, or any novel. O’Brien ultimately asks readers to question what the purpose of his stories or any stories.

Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" is a short story told in the form of a catalogue. O'Brien's title provides both an accurate description of how the story is organized mainly by lists, with the narrative seeming an almost accidental intrusion but also as a sort of recurrent musical refrain in the text itself. The title phrase is repeated at semi-regular intervals in the text, and encourages the reader to understand the catalogue of items as adding up to something larger than the mere objects described. It is important to recognize, however, that the objects are in fact described with painstaking accuracy, and not impressionistically; as Kaplan notes of O'Brien's style in this story, "all of the things are depicted in a style that is almost scientific in its precision. We are told how much each subject weighs, either psychologically or physically, and in the case of artillery we are even told how many ounces each round weighed." (Kaplan 44-5) I hope to demonstrate through an examination of O'Brien's repetitions of the title phrase that the overall intent of the story is metaphorical. We are asked to understand the young soldiers in Vietnam through an analysis of the narrator's lists of "the things they carried".