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War In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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The title The Things They Carried is an essential phrase to this story. The first chapter, which happens to be different from the rest of the story, follows along a pattern of repeating the phrase “The Things They Carried” and a list of things that they literally carried. Throughout the rest of the story, the reader learns more of what the soldiers carried emotionally. It took a lot to get through the war, and they survived by telling stories and helping each other. The message of the title conveys that war is more in-depth than what it first may seem. Not many people, when they hear the word “war,” think of the heavy radio that a man has to carry around and how heavy his poncho is. Furthermore, the meaning of the title most definitely changes from pre to post reading. After the reader gets to …show more content…

The idea is that men, during times of war, need each other to get by. This is the idea of friendship and sticking together. There is another theme, not as directly related to the story, of what is fiction and what isn’t. Throughout this work, the reader is almost listening in carefully to all of the stories that O’Brien has to tell. He often plays with the idea that the stories are tampered with or changed to make the read more exciting, or that they are made up entirely. A very recurring pattern was the sewage that Kiowa dies in. It plays a huge part in at least three of the chapters in the book and plays a major role each time. This goes along with the theme of what is fact or fiction. The field may have been similar, but it was not the exact same as when O’Brien described it as. The original field may have been slightly different, between the author forgetting or him changing it to have more effect on the reader. The author’s intention throughout this entire play has been to affect the person reading, and he has accomplished that goal ever since he had published the book twenty years

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