A Brief Review Of The Things They Carried 'By Tim O' Brien

In the novel “The Things They Carried” author and also ex-veteran Tim O’brien writes a collection of linked short stories about a platoon of American soldiers fighting during the vietnam war. The Vietnam war was a long, unpopular and costly war and once U.S citizens began to see the harsh realities of the war their support for it quickly diminished. Approximately 20 years after the war had started, due to the fear of communism spreading, it finally came to an end leaving at least 58,000 American soldiers, out of 3 million casualties, dead and the remaining scarred for life with emotional and physical burdens. Throughout each short story we learn the significance in which the the title of the novel holds, it expresses that the soldiers not

Curt symbolized a tough soldier's pride. The vietnam war was a questionable war that was never questioned by American troops. “They [American troops] carried their reputations...just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment”(21). Soldiers did not join the war because they wanted to it was because they felt they needed to in order to meet societal expectations. Curt Lemon was young, “He had the tendency to play the tough soldier role” (86), Curt wanted to live up to an image, a desire triggered by war, that he wasn’t afraid of anything. The ironic thing about curts desire to fulfill that image was that all while he wanted to not be afraid of anything he was afraid of being afraid. Through Curt, readers are introduced to one of the many intangible things that soldiers carry which is the weight of fear. Curt Lemon let the fact that he showed he was afraid eat at him, “The embarrassment must have turned a screw in his head” (88), for he was not allowed to sleep until he convinced the dentist to pull out a perfectly fine

Throughout the entire novel Tim O’brien depicts how each of his fellow platoon members are controlled by their subconscious mind. In this specific chapter, through O’brien’s use of imagery, we are allowed to see how traumatizing and brain picking the realities of war actually is. Rat Kiley, the protagonist of this chapter, has finally had too much, from witnessing people die at war to being placed in the darkness, and he’s reached his breaking point. Everyone knew that Rat was losing his mind and, “it was a sad thing to watch” (221). It was sad because they were aware of the reason behind his actions, which was the war itself, but it was also sad because his fellow troops knew there was nothing that they could do to help him and that they were just as susceptible to falling into the same madness that captured Rat Kiley. The setting itself had the ability to drive any one sane person insane. These men marched through the darkness, “no moon and no stars. It was the purest black you could imagine” (220), all while carrying the paranoing thought of being attacked or, “getting cut off from the rest of the unit” (220). Rat Kiley could not handle it anymore, he started off isolated then began to talk to himself about weird things such as the bugs and how they were all out to get him. This was what war did to men, it drove them to insanity. At one point Kiley speaks aloud on what he’s