The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

In Tim O´ Brien´s “The things they carried” soldiers carry plenty physical weight depending on necessity; however, mental stresses are heavier. The fear of death is a burden that the characters carry as well as nostalgia for their love ones. The heavy war equipment that they carry for survival, Kiowa´s trauma for ted lavender´s death and lieutenant cross concern of another tragedy happening are a sign of their fear of death equally are materialistic memories, reminiscence and lieutenant´s obvious obsession for Martha are signs of a burden of nostalgia.

The Vietnam War began when the North Vietnamese government and the Vietnam congress fighting to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses themes such as love, shame and guilt to illustrate the tangible and intangible items the soldiers carry throughout the war and the rest of their lives.

The Civil War, World War I, the Vietnam War, World War II, and the conflict in the Middle East are all wars that have been fought over the difference of opinions, yet come at the cost of the soldier's fighting for those opinions; Humans killing other humans, and death is just one of the many emotional scars soldiers face in war. Why, then, do we go to war when mental health is the cost? Many readers would disagree that the Vietnam War changed the view soldiers had on the world. Most would see the war as just senseless violence or a noble cause in the name of freedom. However, they are unaware of the changes war has on soldiers' perceptions of life.

In the novel, The Things They Carried, the war stories of the characters are nothing like the glamour-filled heroic tales. Men had enlisted in the Vietnam war in honor of serving their country despite the uncertain outcomes. The silent truths of the war remain hidden until resurfaced through trauma. The narrator, Tim O’Brien shows the readers how the results of war can be unsettling and scar the soldiers forever. Though the soldiers have survived physically, mentally they are dead. Every time a death takes place in the story, guilt takes over the soldiers rational thoughts. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien clarifies the misconceptions of war being honorable to portray the truth of the Vietnam War and how it has psychologically self-destructive

O’Brien continuously mentions the weight of the different objects the men carry to reference the intangible weight of cowardice, fear, and guilt they feel. This implies that the weight of the intangible goods is so gargantuan that it is indescribable, and the tangible items, even with their significant weight, cannot begin to compare to the psychological burden of their sentiments. One of the items the soldiers carry is a 28-pound mine detector; O’Brien describes it, saying “they carried it anyway, partly for

Finding the Truth Within the Fiction in The Things They CarriedAlthough there are many themes displayed throughout the stories told by Tim O’Brien inThe Things They Carried, none of them will have the intended impact on the audience if theylack the ability to separate the truth from the fiction. Interpreting this truth throughout the novelmay be hard due to the often made-up recollections rather than factual events, which often resultin a lack of respect for the accounts being presented. However, once the reader can comprehendthat not all of the stories are true, yet the emotions always are, a new appreciation for the storieswill be found as well as a deeper comprehension. Tim O’Brien’s recollection of his time spentfighting the war in Vietnam is not always completely truthful, but truth can always be found inthe book through the emotions and morals that come along with his blunt, brutal stories.

The Things They Carried is a brutally honest novel about, not the Vietnam war itself, but about a veterans experiences with it. The war itself is merely a setting, taking a backseat to the characters who are coping with things ranging from love, fear, and, most importantly to this book, loss. The novel is somewhat reminiscent of an anthology, with each chapter usually surrounding a new story that O’Brien experienced or heard about. This haphazard way of storytelling reflects the war itself, and the way these soldiers had no idea where they would be the following day, if they were even still alive. O’Brien also consistently questions the honesty of the stories his fellow soldiers told, as well as the stories he himself is telling the readers. This, once again, may be to evoke feelings of deceit and fear, not knowing if anything being

O’Brien wrote The Things They Carried with a simple purpose; he wanted to expose the truth of warfare and to examine storytelling, itself. The Things They Carried was an eye-opening tale of the reality of war. So often were soldiers that to be noble, proud fighters, pinned with medals and given. Soldiers were seen as individuals with the sole purpose of protecting and fighting for freedom; they were the pride and joy of America. However, They Things They Carried revealed the true impact of war. What is left of the noble soldiers is hardly recognizable. Men returning from Vietnam were riddled with guilt, haunted by ghosts of departed brothers, and ashamed of the horrific things they had down overseas. Twenty years after writing The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien did an interview in

In Tim O’Brien’s Novel The Things They Carried , carrying something wasn’t always physical. Soldiers will, and always have to, carry things that are not only tangible, but intangible as well. “They carried the land itself-Vietnam, the place, the soil-powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.” (…) In these few sentences Tim O’Brien shows that the soldiers as well as himself carried more than just weaponry. “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing-these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” (…) Soldiers carry their lives and souls with them during the war. Their psychological understanding, compassion, and love intangible things they

The Things They Carried is a collection of fictional stories inspired by Tim O’Brien’s time in the Vietnam War and the struggles young men had to face in one of the most controversial wars in U.S. history. After the Vietnam War was over, when the veterans came home, most of which were drafted, they shunned by the American public for fighting a war in which many did not support and many veterans were homeless due to the lack of support from the government. Therefore, O’Brien uses these stories to not only have a deeper meaning and understanding of what the soldiers had to endure (both during and after the war), yet to also keep the dead alive by telling their stories. To do so, Tim O’Brien effectively

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.

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 novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is about the emotional effects the war has on soldiers and the reality vs expectation upon soldiers. O’Brien tells this story from his perspective as a young man and how he struggles with even the idea of war. He talks about what soldiers overcome throughout it. O’Brien describes what it is like for the soldiers to always have a constant worry that they could die at any time and not go home to their family.

Soldiers throughout the ages have had to carry the burden of what war brings upon them. Physical strain is a huge weight to carry, but mental turmoil that a soldier endures becomes the most strenuous and lasting of the numerous burdens placed upon them. When soldiers knowingly carry these burdens into a war zone, it is so a majority of people can live life free from violence and destruction. Strong underlying metaphor is prevalent in Tim O’Brien’s Novel The Things They Carried. Metaphor is used throughout the text of the book to create a sense of understanding or to convey a different meaning than the text originally suggests. This allows the reader to more fully relate to the soldier’s experiences on the battlefield and at home. It is hard to understand such a large amount of destruction from reading a page in a book.

The things they carried was a very interesting book that was filled with various stories. They all took place during the Vietnam War and follow multiple protagonists that reappear in later stories. Throughout the story, there is a vast number of themes and symbolism. One theme I found interesting is the theme of physical and emotional burdens. This was especially noticeable in ‘’The Things They Carried’’, where they were carrying both literally and figurative. ‘’ They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture.’’ (pg. 77) Sure enough, soldiers have to endure walking miles upon miles with a heavy backpack along with war equipment and standard m-16’s and such, but it becomes evident that the emotional burdens on their shoulders weigh more than the physical objects. These burdens come in the form of grief, sadness, and a vast number of what is mostly negative emotions. Jimmy Cross, the protagonist of this short story, is a perfect example. He got extremely distracted from his duty as a lieutenant. He even lost one of his men. And yet he could not stop thinking about his love for someone who clearly didn’t love him back. It’s times like that, especially in a war, that require you to put