Spring Book Review In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien tells the tale of not about war, but rather about war’s effect on one’s mentality. Ultimately, this novel is built on a foundation of the items that the soldiers of the Vietnam War carried. Whether it was the way Jimmy Cross uses the pebble to escape from his duties as a soldier or when Norman Bowker realizes that courage comes form within, not from receiving a Silver Star; O’Brien uses baggage as a symbol throughout the book to teach that war does in fact change people. These possessions were not just materialistic, they made up the soldiers’ attributes, made up the soldiers’ persona and made up the soldier. In the beginning of the story we are introduced to Lieutenant …show more content…
It makes things vivid. When you’re afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood – you give it together, you take it together.” (O’Brien, 220)
An underlying of this book is the value of friendship. The bond that these men formed with each other in the heat of battle is incomprehensible to those who have not experienced warfare for themselves. It helped them to survive, exclude anyone who was outside their group, and help the men of Alpha Company to cope with the war after they returned to the United States. Without the bonds of friendship, none of the men of Alpha Company would have survived mentally or physically the strains and trauma of the Vietnam War.
The Things They Carried takes place during the late 1960s and 1980s. The end of the play is set in Massachusetts, while the rest of the book focuses on Vietnam. The setting is a significant part of the story because it is during the Vietnam War and is central to the story. This aspect of the novel is what makes it significant to American history. In The Things They Carried, it brought to the attention of readers what the soldiers carried with them to shield off illness, stay warm, protect their comrades, to kill the enemy’s soldiers and to remember their loved ones at home. For example Kiowa always took along his New Testament and a pair of moccasins for silence. Cross would
The symbols in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” are essential to understanding the soldiers and their lives during the Vietnam War. At the opening of the story, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross would dig into his foxhole and read the letters while imagining romance with Martha; however, at the end of the story after the death of Ted Lavender, he “crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha’s letters” (402). The inner feelings of Cross would be mistakenly ignored without the help of symbols throughout his travel through Vietnam. O’Brien uses the emotional and physical weight carried by the soldiers as a representation of their personalities and how they prefer to cope with the war. The
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,
Written by author Tim O’Brien after his own experience in Vietnam, “The Things They Carried” is a short story that introduces the reader to the experiences of soldiers away at war. O’Brien uses potent metaphors with a third person narrator to shape each character. In doing so, the reader is able to sympathize with the internal and external struggles the men endure. These symbolic comparisons often give even the smallest details great literary weight, due to their dual meanings. The symbolism in “The Things They Carried” guides the reader through the complex development of characters by establishing their humanity during the inhumane circumstance of war, articulating what the men need for emotional and spiritual survival, and by revealing
“War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” (80)
These men looked to each other for emotional support and reassurance since none was coming from the homefront. The men of Alpha Company trusted each other with their lives. Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk are a good example of this trust, “In late August they made a pact that if one of them should ever get totally fucked up – a wheelchair wound – the other guy would automatically find a way to end it” (O’Brien, 71). This pact helps these two in that they know that if it came down to living their entire life in a wheel chair that the other would end it there in Vietnam. The men trusted each other to make no mistakes because one mistake could cause someone to lose their life.
The Vietnam War began in 1954, consisting of many extensive, horrific years of battle that seemed to create more harm to the United States and its soldiers rather than to North Vietnam. The 500,000 United States military personnel returned home with the loss of the war and the loss of their friends on their minds. Although the physical and emotional experiences that the men went through is unfathomable, Tim O’Brien does a great job portraying what life as a soldier was truly like in the Vietnam War. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien depicts the unstable emotional and psychological condition of the American soldiers through the symbolism of their belongings and personal anecdotes from their lives.
For countless of people today, the Vietnam war is just something from the past, but for Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam War will endlessly be with him. This one year in Vietnam changes the lives of this platoon from emotional pain, physical pain, as well as muscle pain will commence to cloud their vision. The weight of the things that they carried takes great effect on them that they have to continue to endure on this one year trip in Vietnam and remember these memories for the rest of their lives..
The Things They Carried is about a group of soldiers set during the Vietnam War. We are first introduced to Lieutenant Jimmy Cross in the jungle setting of Vietnam. At first glance the reader is submerged into his secrete obsession with a women named Martha. He carries letters from her enjoys fantasies involving the two and even has gone as so far as to lick an envelope just because she did all in the name of love or his version of it. Love is an emotion felt by every human being no matter age or period of time.
To begin, the narrator who we perceived to be O’brien himself tells the story in a third person perspective, describing the thoughts and actions of first lieutenant Jimmy Cross. As the story opens we are met by 1LT.Cross, who is carrying letters from a girl back home named “Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey” (O’brien 1-2) who he has deep feelings for but she does not feel the same for him. O’brien depicts this story as a love story because he wants the readers to feel connected to the characters and give them
"The Things They Carried," is a story about drafted soldiers during the Vietnam era who were sent to the Vietnam War. The author, Tim O’Brien, describes the things that the men carry during their tour of duty. The items carried are both physical and impalpable items and what these things are is subject to the individual soldier. They carry the necessities for survival in the jungles of Vietnam as well as the personal things each soldier feels necessary to make life as comfortable as possible. Additionally, each of the men carries the memories and fears of past and present experiences. The heaviness of the impalpable items is as tangible as that of any physical item, and not so easy to cast away. The literary argument in which the novel
In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses this story as a coping mechanism; to tell part of his stories and others that are fiction from the Vietnamese War. This is shown by using a fictions character’s voice, deeper meaning in what soldier’s carried, motivation in decision making, telling a war story, becoming a new person and the outcome of a war in one person. Tim O’ Brien uses a psychological approach to tell his sorrows, and some happiness from his stories from the war. Each part, each story is supposed to represent a deeper meaning on how O’Brien dealt, and will deal with his past. In war, a way to
In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien the author tells about his experiences in the Vietnam war by telling various war stories. The quote, "It has been said of war that it is a world where the past has a strong grip on the present, where machines seemed sometimes to have more will power than me, where nice boys (girls) were attracted to them, where bodies ruptured and burned and stand, where the evil thing trying to kill you could look disconnecting human and where except in your imagination it was impossible to be heroic." relates to each of his stories.
In "The Things They Carried," O'Brien made reference to the Vietnam war that was closely associated with the physical, psychological, and emotional weight the soldiers beared. The overall method of presentation of this story incorporated many different outlooks on the things the soldiers carried, dealt with, and were forced to adapt to. In addition to this, O'Brien showed us the many reasons why and how the soldiers posessed these things individually and collectively and how they were associated directly and indirectly. The strong historical content in "The Things They Carried" helped emphasize the focus of the story and establish a clearer understanding of details in the
The novel, The Things They Carried is a story of one man’s accounts resulting to his tour of duty in Vietnam. Many of the men that are discussed in the book continued to be effected by the war, long after they returned home. Men were left emotionally scared, even if they managed to get out of the war physically unharmed. The
The Vietnam War. A war that many Americans believed unfair and unnecessary. “Why am I being sent off to fight in a war I don’t know anything about? Will I ever return again?” Many draftees asked themselves these questions hoping to find comfort in the answers. But there was little to no hope, and they knew it. They were being drafted and they could do absolutely nothing about it, only hope that at the end they would be returning to the enlightened faces of their loved ones, something that not many Vietnam soldiers expected to ever see again. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, portrays his experience in the war along with his fellow squad members, in their fight for survival against the Vietcong. In The Things They Carried, each