Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: An Analysis

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.

Laurence Stern wrote, “ No body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time.” By interpreting this quote, Stern says that no one can understand what it feels like for a man to have his mind torn apart by two equivalent forces that pull him apart in opposite directions inside. There was much underlying meaning and connection from Laurence Stern’s quote and to The Things They Carried. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien is the author as well as the character who is pulled apart by two projects: war and morals. The war in Vietnam heavily impacts each soldier causing them to yearn for

The Vietnam War was a long conflict lasting between 1955 to 1975 between the communist North and the democratic south with help from the United States. More than 3 million people, including 58,000 American troops were killed in the conflict. Tim O 'brien 's short story “The Things They Carried” follows a platoon named alpha company during the peak of the Vietnam war led by first lieutenant Jimmy Cross who is very charismatic but in his mind he is unsure how to lead his squad because his mind tends to wander to a thought of a girl back home. Throughout the story he has overcome with emotions and guilt because he believes he his the reason for some of his squadmates death. “The Things They Carried” Embodies the hardship, reality, and price/toll of war, ultimately Tim O’brien writes this masterpiece as not of a war story, but as a love story and how that love changed a man.

The book opens with Tim O’Brien listing items that the soldiers needed to carry with them for life in Vietnam, such as a P-38 can opener, mosquito repellent, C rations, dog tags, and many more necessities, weighing around twelve to eighteen pounds in total. Many men also had the added weight of weapons needed for combat, which then added another five to twenty-six pounds depending on what weapon and the amount of ammunition necessary. On average, most men carried around thirty pounds, but the load was much higher when considering the emotional and psychological weight put on their shoulders from the impact of these items. Early on in the book Tim O’Brien states, “They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent

In the story The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien shows the reader a sense of depressing love. O’Brien uses the physical weight carried by the soldiers as a motif for the emotional burdens they must endure while fighting in Vietnam. A love of which is portrayed in the story with a soldier loving a woman more than his fellow soldiers. But this woman does not love him in the same way. O’Brien uses many literary devices throughout the story, and shall be covered in this text. The tone in the text is very prevalent, and O’Brien gives the reader easy access to find and understand them.

The novel, The Things They Carried is a story of one man’s accounts resulting to his tour of duty in Vietnam. Many of the men that are discussed in the book continued to be effected by the war, long after they returned home. Men were left emotionally scared, even if they managed to get out of the war physically unharmed. The

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.

Throughout the novel, O’Brien demonstrated the many burdens the soldiers would carry such as emotional burdens that were by far the heaviest as they could not be disposed of. An example of an emotional burden a soldier would carry is shown when O’Brien states, “It was a simple pebble, an ounce at most…He realized it was only a gesture… Lavender was dead… You couldn't burn the blame… Besides, the letters were in his head (O’Brien 15 and 25).” O’Brien exposes the emotional burden Lieutenant Jimmy Cross would carry. Furthermore, Cross physically carried a pebble, letters, and photographs all given to him by Martha, the girl he would claim to be deeply in love with. However, because he would often be preoccupied thinking about Martha, he began neglecting his responsibilities as leader. The effects of the

“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a short story written about the Vietnam War. The title has two meanings. The first is their duties and equipment for the war. The second, the emotional sorrows they were put through while at war. Their wants and needs, the constant worry of death were just a few of the emotional baggage they carried. During the Vietnam War, like all wars, there were hard times. Being a soldier wasn’t easy. Soldiers always see death, whether it be another soldier or an enemy. In “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien explores the motivation of solders in the Vietnam War to understand their role in combat, to stay in good health, and accept the death of a fellow soldier.

Death and violence occur almost in every chapter of the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. One of the major death events happens in the first chapter, “The Things They Carried” and in the chapter “How To Tell a True War Story”, where Curt Lemon was blown up by grenades, “I remember the shadows spreading out under the trees where Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley were playing catch with smoke grenades.” In the first chapter “The Things They Carried”, Lavender was shot and killed in the first week of April, “In the first week of April Lavender died. In “How To Tell a True War Story” an incident occurred when Rat and Curt shot a baby buffalo, “He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee.” All this death and violence in this little novel, so much has happened violence, and death has happened throughout this entire novel.

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.

First of all, O’brien gives attention to detail when he talks about what it is the soldiers carried with them in the Vietnam War. He even gives the exact weight of the items that he describes. “The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat

The Vietnam War was the largest, most prolonged military conflict for the United States of America in world history, besides the recent war in Afghanistan. Many Vietnam veterans have written books and novels about their experiences, however, Tim O’Brien, an American who was drafted into the Vietnam war and an American writer, has written numerous books about his war experiences. In particular, Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, tells all his experiences in detail about the war, what it was like, and his friends he made because of the war. He reflects his feelings through war stories that are difficult to grasp as “true”. The Things They Carried depicts that the young soldiers had a bigger burden besides the heavy weight of their required SOP, or Standard Operating Procedure of luggage. O’Brien’s novel shows us his friends and his own personal experiences of love, hurt, friendship, and war and how they affect them emotionally and psychologically today, through the use storytelling and recalling flashbacks in their journey as soldiers in Vietnam at the time of war.

In the short story, “The Things They Carried”(1987), Tim O’Brien elucidates the encumbrance of both the physical and emotional burdens carried by soldiers in war. Written in the third person omniscient point of view and set on battlefields of Vietnam during the war, the story details exactly what each man in a battalion of 17 carried both literally and figuratively; Lieutenant Cross, throughout the story, struggles to reconcile his love for Martha and his commitment to the men in his squadron, an emotional strain that he packs through the dense foliage of Vietnam; after a man under his protection dies as a result of his own affection for Martha, Cross decides to sever his emotional connection to her and focus solely on the safety of his men,

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a fictional book consisting of different stories from Vietnam war. Tim O’Brien was trying to convey the real perspectives of the war to his readers by telling facts and stories through his personal memories he got from the war, and how things effect them and their life after the war. In order to express the tension in the war, O’Brien depicts the experience of the soldiers by showing the different ways of expression of male love from these soldiers. Although there are many forms of friendship, some of which may vary from place to place, the friendship in the war is the most unique one. As the definition of Friendship, Friendship is a stronger form of interpersonal bond than an association. The bond between soldiers is more intense and real, and this is also the message that Tim O’Brien shows in his book by using metaphor, details depicting and technique of repetition.