Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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

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 Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, is a series of tales about the war in Vietnam. The stories express the hardships the men of Alpha Company faced while in the war and also their feelings towards this brutal war. Tim O’Brien did a phenomenal job of recreating the scenes of the war in the readers mind, making the reader feel as if they were a member of the company. Not only is this novel telling stories of the Vietnam War, but it also expresses the emotions of pure sadness, fear, and anger of each individual soldier.

A famous author once said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” this was quoted from Dr.Seuss. Dr. seuss is saying reading more does nothing but benefit us, so why does the school board want to limit us by taking away a right we have which is reading whatever we desire even if it's fiction.In the book The Things They Carried the author Tim O’brien mixed fiction and realism. For example he addressed the aftereffects of war and also what happens during war. Tim gave us a perspective into something that's real by using fictional aspects to portray that. The way O’brien tells the story in the book gives you his perspective into war and the troubles along with it.

At some time in life, a person will experience the death of a relative or lose something that was very important to him or her. After that traumatic event, will that person confront his or her pain, or will that person bury it deep within them? Both ways are possible, however, only one is effective in the long term. According to Tim O'Brien, the most effective way to heal after a traumatic experience is to share stories. In Tim’s book, The things they carried, he used the motifs of loneliness, life, and the mood of nostalgia to illustrate the importance of sharing stories during a healing process.

Tim O'Brien's novel, "The Things They Carried" is based upon a platoon of soldiers in Vietnam, in which as the title hint's at, focuses on the items and more emotional parts of being a soldier. These items range from the essentials of being a solider, ranging from food, water, shovels etc. To the more personal and individualistic items, with examples ranging from the more common, love letters, holding a bible and pictures of loved ones, or to the more "unique" (or odd) items chosen, such as pantyhose, a thumb and even moccasins. Whether or not these items appear weird or generic to us is irrelevant, behind those items is a deep sentimental meaning to that item to that soldier or person, which is exactly what we will be looking into for "The

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change” (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein). War can be a drastic change for the life of a person as war can ultimately morph them into a slave of the battlefield. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’ Brien describes the experiences of people in the Vietnam War and how they have become changed individuals from their past lives before combat. War pummels you with things that transcend your typical escapades and the more you try to understand them, the more you get sucked into the void of combat. The increased time the characters are in the battlefield, the more they have to think about it, thus shaping who they are. Only time can determine how much war can affect you.

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.

No war is easy for the soldiers who put their lives on the line to fight for what they believe in. The soldiers on both sides of the Vietnam War faced challenges that changed their lives forever and left a lasting effect on their physical and mental health. The hardships faced in the Vietnam War as depicted in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien are an accurate representation of the struggle faced by not only the soldiers fighting the war but also those who were involved in nonviolent positions.

Vietnam, the heart and soul of teenage rebellion to the government for creating a draft that sent over the creative and intelligent youth, was a war that was deemed to get rid of the political idea, communism, which spread as quick as the napalm that blazed over the serene green landscapes. The narrator to the story, Tim O’Brien, repeatedly recounts memories of the war, each with an added detail or an object that carried a significant amount of weight that makes the story seem more factual than what it seems. The soldiers carried loneliness, uncertainty of the truth of war, and the heavy burden of physical and emotion weight; Tim O'Brien uses war related imagery to symbolize the vim of storytelling in his book “The Things They Carried”.

Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried follows the experiences of O’Brien himself among other American soldiers he fought with throughout the Vietnam War. While he claims that the entire story is a work of fiction, some of the events portrayed throughout the novel did, in fact, actually happen to him and his peers to an extent. The whole novel is not written on a linear timeline, but it rather reads similar to a collection of short stories that all tie together to an extent. While he was in combat, O’Brien saw a wide variety of deaths, but he also managed to bond with the other members of his platoon, each having their own personal experiences and beliefs regarding the war itself among other topics. Although the war gave Tim O’Brien a

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

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

Essay: In the Novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, the author, writes his texts from a soldier's point of view based during the vietnam war, his text is also metafictional which allows the author to blur the lines between truth and lies. This metafictional basis has allowed the author to write freely about his experiences while at the same time being able to create stories to to provoke the desired response from a reader. The connection I will focus on in this text is the difference between truth and war truth in the texts Spin, The Man I Killed, How to Tell a True War Story and Speaking of Courage. Truth is, as we know it to be, the facts of a situation, it is what’s real and honest regardless of factors.

O’Brien spends a lot of time elaborating on the weight of the things they carried to emphasize the physical and emotional baring. Although, the physical items they carried across land during the war weighed a tremendous amount of weight nothing could compare to the weight of the emotional baggage of what they had experienced and carried in their minds. Soldiers struggled coping with the loss of their fellow soldiers and best friends. The situations they encountered were hard for them to comprehend most of the time. They didn’t think they deserved the situations, nor fair that the draft brought them there in the first place. Certain circumstances led them to even blame themselves for what had happened. An example of one of the most attention grabbing deaths in, The Things They Carried, was that of Ted Lavender. Jimmy Cross, lieutenant of the Alpha Company, finds himself