Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

The narrator in the book, The Things They Carried, Tim O’ Brien has a very peculiar life. He has been a lot of different things in his life. He worked in a slaughterhouse, served in the army, and hardest of all, raised a family. Tim O’ Brien has also had trials and tribulations. He has tried to leave America, he killed someone, and he still holds burdens of guilt and disappointment to this day.

In the book, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'brien, the title of the first chapter perfectly mimics the name of the book itself. The author talks about the many items soldier’s carried with them into the Vietnam War, as well as the effects they had on his many teammates. Each new chapter, though, gives new insight as to what they carried around with them besides physical objects. Despite palpable things in which they were required to have, young men would find themselves bearing the heavy weight of responsibility and emotional trauma that came with them. In order to cope with these endeavors, soldier’s would also bring with them something to help, whether it was simply the knowledge of God, or a reason for fighting. O’brien’s stories give

As Tim O’Brien states in his short story book, The Things They Carried, the only true thing about war is its allegiance to evil and obscenity. One example of this faithfulness war has to stick to its truth is the inevitable death of many soldiers. War consumes. It consumes a large amount of resources, money, energy, time, but most of all it consumes human lives. The ones who don’t pass must bear the witness of the death of the others. “In the Field”, one of the short stories in O’Brien’s book, explores the way death is handled by soldiers and the process by which absorb the emotions that come along with it.

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.

In works such as the novel The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien and the movie Full Metal Jacket directed by Stanley Kubrick, we see the hardships soldiers had to pass through during training and the Vietnam War. As it is stated in O’Brien’s book “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 a tangible weight” (O’Brien 20). After stating all of the things they actually carried O’Brien makes reference to them carrying emotional weight, to let the reader know that there was more to the war than fighting. They had other reasons to be there, such not wanting to be titled as cowards for not enlisting themselves in the war. In Full Metal Jacket the emotional weight they have on themselves is also visible throughout the whole movie. The emotional burden caused some of the soldiers such as Private Leonard Lawrence to enlist in the training although he clearly was unfit for the job. This resulted in an amazing turn of events since due to intrinsic motivation to not be the source of everyone’s laugh, he becomes someone completely different. At the end of the first part of the movie Pvt. Lawrence was no longer that unfit soldier we see at the beginning, he had changed to be a vicious person with a death wish. In both works we see the physical and emotional struggles soldiers had to undergo causing them to develop an

In the story "The Things They Carried" Tim voices that the mental burdens outweigh all of the physical pain and weakness. Many of soldiers carried the emotional baggage of the men who will die. The emotional baggage that the soldiers carry such as fear, grief, and love; these were all intangible but carried lots of mass and weight on the soldiers. The fear and the responsibilities far outweigh all of the physical torture that the soldiers must endure in order to stay alive, each soldier has a little bit of hope that they may return home.

In the world of Tim O’Brien story there are many individuals who come from different walks of life. Many affected by their culture, geography, surroundings, and circumstances they have each been exposed too. In “The Things They Carried,” the characters demonstrate the challenges and struggles they face and how they attempt to conceal it inside them. In today’s world this short story can be related to the responsibilities, challenges, and struggles individuals face internally from one day to the next.

Imagine for the rest of your life having to live with the burden of watching not only a fellow soldier, but a friend, die knowing there was nothing you could do about it. The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien describes the encumbrances that many of the soldiers in the Vietnam War had to face, and remember for their entire life if they survived. The Things They Carried goes into detail about the relentless days they spent in Vietnam at War by telling stories of a platoon that the author was in. These stories explain the life changing burdens soldiers have to carry at war and for their entire lives.

Thesis: In the novel The Things They Carried, the author often uses his characters as a way to depict how war affects soldiers. The events described in the book which affected the characters Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders and Curt Lemon highlight that war has no moral which causes soldiers to become emotionally affected and can prematurely age them and make them jaded.

As Patrick Rothfuss said in the book, The Name of the Wind, “Words can light fires in the eyes of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.” Throughout the novel, The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien uses not only words, but also strategies of language to make the readers feel that they too are interwoven in the fabric of war where O’Brien once found himself, the Vietnam War. His flawless execution of these techniques is so notable that the New York Times called the novel “ . . . A book that matters not only to the reader interested in Vietnam, but to anyone interested in the craft of writing as well.” However, making the most considerable impact is O’Brien’s use of language elements to reveal the universal moral truths about

Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” focuses on war, masculinity, and the ability of objects to tether individuals to reality. Interspersed with the perspective of a group of American Vietnam soldiers are lists of objects that made their way with them, developing these characters and demonstrating the importance of items, emotions, and identity. With this focus on things, paralleled with the brutalities of war, O’Brien creates a world that is both ephemeral, set in human consciousness and mortality, and tangible, rooted in the items that prove to ground individuals to the world in extreme circumstances. Ultimately, through symbolism and characterization, O’Brien argues that the burdens of life are simultaneously insubstantial and weighty.

A while after the war, Tim reminisces on his feelings about Linda and how they never changed. Instead of talking to someone about his feelings, he writes. He begins to write things he remembered from when he was 9, then goes on to confess the love he feels for Linda. Tim exclaims, “I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones-- that kind of love” (O’Brien 216).

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

This quote can help to convey the recurring theme of physical and emotional burdens, along with the psychological burdens that were faced after the war. Although the characters in the book had many pieces of equipment and personal items to haul on their travels, they also had to carry their emotions. Many, if not all, of the men were holding fear,

The most profound effect of the story is that it is able to bring the dead back to life. O’Brien says, “The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that