Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Many people assume that when someone is physically gone, they are gone forever. In the chapter “The Lives of the Dead” in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien the author demonstrates that people can, in fact, live on after death through people's thoughts, emotions and imagination with the motif of storytelling.

Going through an era when the Vietnam War was a smash hit in your town, many high school senior boys would be drafted out if their number was on the list of people. The men drafted had to leave behind their families and aspirations. Tim O’Brien uses different perspectives in The Things They Carried to show if something tragic happens in life, consequently dealing with it may be hard. Moving on will help in the future.

In life we carry a lot of emotions, burdens and luggage. There is a quote from a great poet that reads. “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves” in “Things They Carried”. The author Tim o Brien, creates a story about a soldier and his life after the war and struggles that he has to go through and the people around him seem to go through. Tim Obrien writes this story, as a 43 years old man which is recalling his previously experiences as a foot solider in Vietnam. “On their feet they carried jungle boots-2.1 pounds- and Dave Jensen carried 3 pairs of socks” (Obrien 270). The theme revealed in “The Things They carried” is that you can keep your spirits alive by moving and carrying your

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

When fighting as a soldier in the Vietnam War, everything carried has to have significance. In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the soldiers carried items that were important to them symbolically and emotionally. There were some objects that were a necessity such as, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, steel helmets, ponchos, and etc… Also, standard weapons were needed like the M-60, M-16, and M-79. Jimmy Cross was first lieutenant so he had the responsibility to shuffle around a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45-caliber pistol. RTO Mitchell Sanders had the responsibility to carry the PRC-25 radio, which was a whole 26 pounds. Rat Kiley was the medic and had certain items needed to treat

Often in the years following a war the notion of warfare is warped by common conceptions or cliches so that it no longer resembles the realities that the soldiers experienced. However, Tim O’Brien uses his own personal experiences from Vietnam to create stories which exhibit the real situations that these soldiers faced. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, demonstrates this unfiltered reality through multiple literary elements and the creation of fictional stories in order to portray the war accurately. Courage and valor are often associated with the idea of war and are often expected to be traits that all soldiers live by.

A true war story can have no moral. Neither side can be the protagonist or antagonist. Both sides are anti-heroes, they are neither good or bad because there is no moral to war. Since war has no moral, it affects soldiers emotions by effecting their morals. Due to the immorality of war, there is no correct side or perspective.

People view war in a variety of different viewpoints. Not everyone believes it is negative. In the novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’brien explains his perspective on war. He believes that many people are quick to brush away the fact that war is truthfully an astonishing event.

Negative experiences can have lifelong effects on a person, no matter what situation they were in. They live the rest of their lives with flashbacks, nightmares, and survivor’s trauma. Some trauma survivors have help coping with the effects of their situation but most people don’t have any way of coping with what they have seen and gone through. In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, the narrator, Tim O’Brien, writes the stories about the Vietnam War that he was in, 20 years after the war ends. The narrator O’Brien has trouble with coping after the war so he writes stories about the war describing what they went through in detail. He was fresh out of college when he was drafted into the war, so he was very young and inexperienced. He had to go into a war that he knew nothing about and

Vietnam war veteran and novelist Tim O’Brien, in his piece titled, “The Things They Carried,” portrays personal war stories of a group of soldiers during the Vietnam War to convey how stories and memories can aid in coping with death. The novel was extremely emotional and thought provoking, causing me to question what was real or not, and how these stories were more than just stories. As the novel progressed, it became increasingly clear how, for O’Brien and some of the other soldiers, these stories were not just stories for the them to reminisce on, they were a form of therapy, helping them to live on, even when faced with death and morbid experiences. Through these various stories ranging from the distant past and the present, O’Brien successfully

Tim O'Brien gives readers a greater understanding of underlying motivations of soldiers who fought in the Vietnam war in his short story "The Things They Carried." He shows the bond the soldiers share and how that bond helps to hide their fear in order to maintain an honorable reputation. He also depicts the soldiers’ common fear of showing weakness and the ways they hide that fear from the other men in order to avoid being judged. He shows how the men of Alpha Company have the principles of masculinity drilled into their minds, and therefore believe that their reputations hinge upon their manliness. In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” the author uses the brotherhood of the soldiers and the fear of weakness as motivators for the soldiers’ obsession with reputation.

In the novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, a Vietnam war veteran himself, tells stories through a soldier’s eyes to describe the Vietnam war and to prove how war changes people. O’Brien’s stories in this novel are directly inspired by his real-life experiences in the Vietnam war. These stories go step by step telling the story of becoming and being a soldier: describing how a soldier feels when they get their draft letter, how it affects a soldier when they kill someone or a fellow soldier is killed, and how

After reading “The Things They Carried”, I felt a slight understanding in what these soldiers go through. I understand the way they feel neglected afterwards and how they feel during the war. Maybe not 100%, but I do understand. During the war, they’re scared. They’re placed in an entire new environment that they have to deal with for the entire span of the war. Not only do they have to worry about getting the job done, but also staying alive. After the war, they have to worry about staying sane. Being back home after a long period of time can cause a major shift. They feel paranoid and always on edge. This book was surprisingly good. I don’t really enjoy these types of books, but the way it was written was pretty good. I also enjoyed this book because my dad was in the Iraq war, back in 2002 & 2005. It probably wasn’t as bad as the Vietnam war, but I feel

The story, “The Things They Carried” was the experience of foot soldiers during and after the Vietnam war. However, considering the structure of the story, one could say that it is in fact, antiwar story. In the story, the plot jumps from time to time. The story is chaotic, yet it revisits the difficulties for one soldier. Consequently, he was faced with the realities of the war, in which he had to deal with tragedies as well as being in a relationship (Kirszner & Mandell, 2016). In the reading, it involved the mental state of the character, not only were there killings but apparent suicides of those unable to deal with life after the war. Another reason I found the story to be antiwar is because there is nothing positive about war and from

The weight of the world carried by a few. “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is an enthralling story about a company of soldiers, their lives; and how their actions, choices, and societal influences during the Vietnam War changed them forever. Tim O’Brien used his own experiences in war to write very informative and thought provoking stories that blur the lines of reality and fiction. “"The guy who 's narrating this story has my name and a lot of my characteristics .... I blended my own personality with the stories," he explains. But what seems as a simple transference of identity is not. "[I]t isn 't really me .... everything is made up, including the commentary"” (para. 10 Haswell) Soldiers carry the burden of society and life while growing up, becoming a man, and fighting for their lives.