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Complexity Of War In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Complexity of War The war will never end for the soldiers that are living because they carry the weight of the ones they lost and the parts they lost themselves. In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’brien, readers experience the war through his eyes and his descriptions of what he saw and what he heard and how it left some scars that are hard to bear. Through these descriptions O’Brien shows how the characters in The Thing They Carried have less and less of a sense of humanity the longer they’re in the war and the guilt they feel when they realize they are losing their sense of humanity. The jungle consumes the mind, body, and the soul of the invaders and causes more damage than bullets do. As time passes and the time the foreigners spend in the jungle, the jungle seems to become apart of them; almost as if they disappear. “They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer …show more content…

The feelings for revenge and wrong doing don't go away until the mind gets what it wants. “He made a short low cry------not even a cry really, just a short lung-and-throat bark----and there was a blurred sequence he lunged sideways and rolled toward a heap of sandbags and crouched there and hugged his rifle and waited. “There,” I whispered. “Now you know” (O’brien 200). His hate for the medic consumed him and he couldn't forget how Bobby left him for 10 minutes and the thoughts of revenge consumed him so much his mind was not satisfied until he made him feel the the same thing he felt. His thoughts on the event wouldn’t leave. He ultimately ended up haunted by the guilt and shame he felt for the actions he committed towards the medic, and they still bother him

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In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the author skillfully presents a paradox about war and how it is both horrible and beautiful. Through O’Brien’s vivid storytelling and sorrowful anecdotes, he is able to demonstrate various instances which show both the horrible and beautiful nature of war. Within the vulnerability of the soldiers and the resilience found in the darkest of circumstances, O’brien is able to show the uproarious emotional landscape of war with a paradox that serves as the backbone of the narrative. In the first instance, O’Brien explores the beauty in horror within the chapter “Love.”

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War is a topic most people have a strong opinion on. Most people clearly show if they are for a war or against it. Tim O`Brien the main character in the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien was drafted to fight in the Vietnam War. O`Brien view of war is very similar to Henry David Thoreau, the author of “Civil Disobedience ”, view on the war. O’Brien was against the Vietnam War and in his own words says, “ I was drafted to fight a war I hated (O`Brien 40)”.

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Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried consists of a structure that includes varying lengths of chapters. The chapters range from as short as one page to as long as 35-40 pages. For instance, the back to back chapters “Enemies” and “Friends” consist of a short description of occurrences in which Dave Jenson and Lee Strunk get into a fist fight and after learn to trust each other. Contrary to these chapters are chapters such as “On the Rainy River” which contains detailed descriptions of O’Brien’s days preceding his departure to Vietnam. A major rhetorical device that O’Brien uses throughout the entirety of The Things They Carried is irony (in both the longer and shorter chapters).

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The novel The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, illustrates the effect that war has on soldiers, and how their age and immaturity contribute to their experiences. Although their age does not excuse their actions, it is important to understand the impact that being put into war at such a young age has on them. Though the age of the soldiers does not excuse their actions, being put into a high-risk situation while their brains were still developing made for immature decisions that later lead to major consequences.   The first chapter sets the scene for the rest of the book because it introduces the idea of death, more specifically, the death of Ted Lavender.

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