Originally published in 1990, The Things They Carried is a collection of war stories that took place during the Vietnam War. Due to its accurate and honest depiction of war, it has been banned for crude language, violence, drug use, and sexual innuendo. The author, Tim O’Brien, was born in Austin, Minnesota in 1946. Due to his service in the United States military during the Vietnam War, O’Brien is able to depict the war in a more graphic, and realistic manner. "I carry the memories of the ghosts of a place called Vietnam — the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers," quotes O’Brien. "More importantly," he continues, "I carry the weight of responsibility, and a sense of abiding guilt." (npr.org). His intended audience for the book was adults, …show more content…
Like the reporters and camera men at the time, this book provides in great detail what atrocities occurred during the war. “Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a montage of graphic scenes.”(pen.org). Because of its graphic violence and abundant use of profanity, The Things They Carried has been banned and challenged throughout the United States. In Troup, Texas 2016, a mother of an AP English student claimed that the book was “complete garbage, trash” and that it contains “nothing…that will benefit [students] physically, emotionally — mentally, morally, spiritually to be used as an educational tool.” (cbldf.org). Because of this challenge to the book, the principal decided that all questionable content regarding student curriculum will be disclosed to parents beforehand. In 2003, the book was challenged and then completely banned in George County, Mississippi. The copious amounts of profanity and sexual content lead to this unfortunate conclusion. “Using profanity was against school policy and having the book in the library made newly elected school board member, Larry McDonald, feel uncomfortable.”
In the book “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien writes about his experience before and during the Vietnamese War, tells stories about his troop, and their lives before and after the war. He illustrates about how his life changed because of the war, and emphasizes on how the war is so cruel and has no moral at all. His stories involve a lot about Vietnamese War. If people read his story superficially, they will say it is definitely a war story, but he argues that his book is actually about love (81). Although his story looks like a war story, it is actually a loved story because his stories are either about his loved ones or dedicated to his loved ones.
Tim O’Brien and Brian Turner are both war veterans, who published books based on their war experience. Both of their books expresses their feelings and both have a unique way of telling war stories. However, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried book captures the reality of war better than Brian Turner’s Here Bullet book. Tim O’Brien is very descriptive with his story, He is very direct and very good at telling a war story to make it more interesting.
O 'Briens Novel "The Things they Carried" contains twenty two short stories some of these are fiction and some falling in the category memoir or nonfiction. " The Things They Carried functions as an account of the experience of a dozen American solderis as they endured their tour of duty in vietanm war" (82).In Obriens writing "The Things They Carried" O 'brien makes sure he itemizes everything they carried into battle going from the gear they were carrying to the emotions such as fear guilt and shame. In this short story Obrien writes about his squad that mirrored his own when he was over there in Vietnam. The Letuinet of the entire company Jimmy Cross who is over come with guilt because he belive he is the one to blame over the death of Kiowa and Ted Lavender. Kiowa which was one of O 'Brien 's closest friends.
Continuing To Be Affected Soldiers participating in a war they do not understand, suffer physical and mental anguish trying to cope with the horrors of it all. Tim O’Brien is both the narrator and protagonist of the short story “The Things They Carried.” He enters the war a scared young man afraid of the shame that dodging the war would bring him and leaves the war a guilt-ridden middle-aged man who tells stories about Vietnam in order to cope with his painful memories. Jimmy Cross’s character represents the deep effects responsibility has on those who are too immature to handle it. As a sophomore in college, he signs up for the Reserve Officers Training Corps because it is worth a few credits and because his friends are doing it.
O’Briens novel The Things They Carried is a unique text because each chapter tells an individual story. The work also becomes misleading because the chapters are told from different viewpoints. Rather than O’Brien using a traditional flow of chronological order, he tells the stories of his comrades to appeal to the reader at different times in the book. The reader can also begin to question O'Brien's reliability and truthfulness because of his uncommon style. The purpose is O’Briens way to cope with his experience in the Vietnam War; he retouches each memory individually depicting the story of his tragic experience at war.
Reviews of the The Things They Carried tend to praise O’Brien for the detail and truth of his recordings of Vietnam. Writing for the Washington Times, John Greenya truly reviews that O 'Brien does not misconstrue the emotions and events of Vietnam in The Things They Carried First, Greenya explains that O’Brien is truthful to admit that he tried to escape from fighting in the war. This brings The Things They Carried closer to nonfiction because O’Brien does not exaggerate the details of Vietnam to make himself seem like the hero. If pure fiction, O’Brien would have been ready to fight, eagerly receiving his draft letter.
This book has won several awards, in 1999 the National Book Award Finalist; in 2000 it won the Michael L. Printz, and the Coretta Scott-King award. Despites its many awards it has also been challenged and banned in many different school districts because parents didn’t think it was appropriate for their children to read. According to Dean 2013, states “Seven D97 families filed a request with the district last month to have the book removed. A "request for reconsidering" can be made under board policy, which deals with educational materials deemed "offensive or controversial. " The policy also calls for an internal committee to be convened to review such materials”.
Victoria Perich 5 October 2015 Forms of Literature “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien’s short story, “The Things They Carried”, talks from a narrative point of view. The title of his story foreshadows the overall theme of an emotional versus physical burden throughout the soldiers experience in the Vietnam War. O’Brien talks about the various items the soldiers were carrying, along with their emotional baggage and the emotional toll the war was taking on them. Some of the baggage that is being lugged with them is composed of love, terror, grief and longing.
Introduction The Things They Carried is a text where writer Tim O’Brien the stories he encountered throughout his time in the Vietnam War. These stories, traumatic as well as warm and humorous, are ones that the author will never erase from his memory. It seems that O’Brien is retelling these stories to enlighten those who have never had experience on the battlefield in order to reach a certain level of understanding and to discover repercussions that it brings onto the human condition, both physically and mentally. Evidently, he wants to convey emotion within the reader. The stories also recall the life lessons that O’Brien learned about friendship, forgiveness, respect and reputation as well as foreignness and the other.
“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.
The short story “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, is about the experience of a team of American soldiers in the Vietnam war (Julia Guance et al. 323). O’Brien fought in the war of Vietnam himself and used writing as a way to express the realities of war (322). His works are realistic, given his personal experience at war. Each soldier in the story “The Things They Carried” carry specific objects that reflect their personality and priorities. Jimmy Cross is a twenty-four-year-old, American First Lieutenant.
The Stories Told by the Soldiers In the book The Things We Carried by Tim O'Brien, he tells the reader stories about his experience in the Vietnam war. He tells stories about before, during and after the war. O’Brien explains his feelings towards the war by hinting it in many of his stories. He uses juxtaposition, diction, irony, metafiction, and repetition.
Over twenty years after his service in Vietnam was concluded, Tim O’Brien wrote The Things They Carried (1990). Tim O’Brien is a veteran as well as an author of memoirs, short stories, and war stories. O’Brien grew up an all-American child, after high school he went onto college and received his BA in Political Science. In 1968 O’Brien was drafted in to the United States Army and was then sent to fight in the Vietnam War. Twenty-two years after his service, O’Brien wrote the book The Things They Carried.
The Things They Carried Second hand sources is the only way adolescents of this age are able to uncover the stories about what happened in Vietnam in 1955. The Things They Carried consists of Tim O’Brien’s recollection of the Vietnam War. The book explains the importance of keeping these memories alive, even if it’s not the exact truth. Characters are shown as they were during the war and the materials and memories they carried everywhere with them.
In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien expresses himself through fictionalized war stories as catharsis to comfort himself in the only way that he knows how. He tries to show the reader all of the pains of war that not only he felt, but his other young companions that fought alongside him in the brutal war. In the novel, O’Brien is a successful young man who is drafted into the Vietnam War to fight grudgingly for something he claims to be against. He recounts many of his experiences in stories based on true events but that are elaborated and fictionalized for the benefit of the reader’s understanding. This portrayal of the war in his words is a form of therapy for him that keeps him sane; even though the stories he tells are