Change In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Seeing people all around you getting Injured and Killed all the time when you are Thousands of miles away from home will charge you. War changes everything about you, the way you talk, the way you see things, the way you look at life, and many other things. In the book, The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien, the people and soldiers in Vietnam experience some kind of change. The Book is about the Vietnam War, it talks about physical and emotional baggage that the soldiers carried, O’Brien talks about the friends he lost in the war and the friends that survived but had to deal with the stress of the war. He talks about the soldiers and how they changed because of the war. The people who went to Vietnam during the war were changed by

When O’Brien got the draft letter in the mail he claimed that he was too good for the war. O’Brien also said, “I was no soldier. I hated Boy Scouts. I hated camping out. I hated dirt and tents and mosquitoes. The sight of blood made me queasy, and I couldn't tolerate authority, and I didn't know a rifle from a slingshot” (O’Brien 26). O’Brien had just gotten the draft letter and is feeling mixed emotions because he believes that he is too smart for war and it must be a mistake that he got the letter. He says that he hates pretty much every aspect of war, and he knows absolutely nothing about firearms. Later on in the story, when O’Brien has experienced some of the war, he said, “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” (O’Brien 51). Now you can tell that O’Brien likes war or at least tolerates it more than he did. He wouldn’t say that war is love, fun, and thrilling if he hated everything about war. He knows the difference between a slingshot and a gun now. O’Brien changed from hating war and not knowing weapons to saying that war is love, war is

He was affected differently than the others. Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley were war friends, when the platoon was taking a break from moving, “Curt Lemon stepped on a booby-trapped 105 round. He was playing catch with Rat Kiley, laughing, and then he was dead” (O’Brien 49). Lemon was one of the first death’s he had seen, Ted Lavender was the first. Kiley and Lemon were playing catch, and then he was gone. After Lemon was killed Kiley took his emotions out on baby VC water buffalo. Later on Kiley couldn’t take it anymore, “The next morning he shot himself. He took off his boots and socks, laid out his medical kit, doped himself up, and put a round through his foot” (O’Brien 143). He shot himself in the foot to get him out of active duty because he’s seen too much war and too many bodies. It’s a change because earlier in the story he hadn’t seen war and only a couple bodies. Kiley suffered from PTSD, which is why he shot himself to leave the