Mortality And Death In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

“Doesn't matter what the press says doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the country decides something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe no, matter the odds or consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world. No you move.” -Captain America. Tim O’Brien wrote The Things They Carried. The protagonist is Tim O’Brien and his platoon while the antagonist is the war. The Things They Carried is a nonlinear book because you never know what is going to happen. Some of the conflicts O'Brien's platoon had to face was the weather and trying to survive Vietnam. O’Brien’s intended audience is everyone who did not experience the Vietnam War. Two of the major themes of his book were morality and mortality and death.
In the chapter ‘‘In the Field’’ O’Brien uses the theme morality. In the being the soldier’s looked for Kiowa’s body. The soldiers were trying to figure out whose fault it was for Kiowa’s death. In the end, the soldiers found Kiowa’s body. “At daybreak a

In the beginning O’Brien discusses the first time he killed a man with a grenade. O’Brien describes in vivid detail the man he just killed. At the end of the chapter Kiowa and a fellow soldier try to help O’Brien with the grief of killing a man. “Kiowa glanced at the body... you want to trade places with him?...Be honest”(O'Brien 120). Kiowa is trying to get O’Brien to cope with the death. He does this by asking him if he would rather be the dead guy. The quote connects to the theme morality and death because O’Brien has to make a choice and that leads to someone dying. O’Brien thought it was the right choice to throw the grenade and that lead to the death because it meant he