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Soldiers In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

689 Words3 Pages

The soldiers in Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, were no different than any other soldiers in any other war. They carried rifles, comforters, and pictures of loved ones with them throughout the war. However, most soldiers carried emotional and mental burdens around with them too. Some of these soldiers include Lt. Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, and Rat Kiley. Other soldiers in the book also carried around mental and emotional burdens, but these men in particular, stuck out to me. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is the leader of the platoon. “He carried … the responsibility for the lives of his men” (O’Brien 5). As the commander of the crew, he felt that if something happened to his men, no matter the situation, it was on him. He felt liable …show more content…

As time went on, however, he became more prominent. Bowker carried the post-war feeling of an unimportant life. “…Bowker described the problem of finding a meaningful use for his life after the war” (O’Brien 149). He just felt that nothing he did were at the stakes of the war. He asked O’Brien to write a story about the night in the field because Norman himself could not find the words to say. Bowker felt that he would finally do something meaningful. However, when O’Brien sent him the story, it wasn’t his story at all. O’Brien had left out Vietnam, Kiowa, and the field. Eight months later Bowker hanged himself. This was a very powerful part of the book. It really shows the hardships and burdens of Norman’s postwar …show more content…

When the unit took a precaution and only traveled at night, the darkness hit Kiley hard. All of the men carried around the burden of panic and fear of falling behind the troop, however, Rat Kiley couldn’t handle it. He began talking about big mutant bugs calling out his name at night. “Constantly scratching himself. Clawing at the bug bites. He couldn’t quit digging at his skin, making big scabs and then ripping off the scabs and scratching the open sores” (O’Brien 210). This mental burden was starting to eat him alive. Also, he was carrying around, day and night, the mental burden of seeing his body parts in dreams. He would imagine his own heart and kidneys. He imagined himself dead. The burden became too unbearable for him and so he doped himself up and shot himself in the foot in order to go home. This is a very gory but important part of the book. It shows just how hard the burden of darkness and depression can affect someone like Rat

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These are all examples of how Norman Bowker had changed throughout the story. He went from being innocent, or without war on his mind ever, to having nothing else to say to anyone if it didn’t involve war. After he had came back from war, he was not able to keep a job, he was not able to keep a conversation going with anyone because no one knew what he was going through. He was also suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) which in the long run, made him feel as if no one would understand him or his story because no one else was in war when he was and no one experienced what he

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O’Brien shows readers and those who know veterans, how moments of morality and shame and guilt arise in war. The chapter “In the Field” shows many moments of shame and guilt for the characters as the result of a death. In the chapter Kiowa dies from sinking into the mud, and his friends are

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One aspect of returning home that was conveyed by this story was doing actions that earned medals. Norman talks of how he almost got more medals and was had the courage to try and rescue Kiowa’s body but couldn’t do it while under artillery fire. This wasn’t a case of whether he could or couldn’t summon a supply of courage to support his country but just the pure reactions someone

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He would accept the blame for what had happened to Ted Lavender”(O’Brian pg.24). This reveals that Jimmy brought the whole platoon together to take blame for the incident, once again showing how much emotional trauma soldiers have to go through. Living with the death of one of your friends and comrades takes a huge toll on a person, and you can see that in both Jimmy and Norman. They both have an immense amount of emotional distress that stems from their time at war, which surpasses the pain that they experience from their physical traumas. Lastly, the experiences Mitchell Sanders had during the book are important to

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It’s hard to write a true war story because some of the things that happen people won’t believe or are even unimaginable. So O’Brien makes his stories related to his real war story. In his mind, he changes his actual war stories into the ones in the book, so it is a good story. If he had talked about his entire time in Vietnam it would be nowhere near as interesting. He made the book

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The Soldier’s Fears First, in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” the tangible items carried by the soldiers reveal their fears of losing a connection to home, fear of the unknown, fear of reality. Holding onto their precious items from home helped them hold onto reality. Second, “the soldiers all had fears of the war and they all carried with them certain items that gave them the comforts of home.” (366). “First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha” (366) he loved her and this was a way of keeping her close, “Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriend’s pantyhose and wrapped them around his neck as a comforter” (372) he must have felt wearing his girlfriend’s pantyhose connected her to him, “Kiowa carried an illustrated New Testament and an old hunting hatchet from his grandfather” (367) his grandfather must

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Rat Kiley was becoming almost numb to seeing men with no legs or arms or dead bodies. In this case he was experiencing PTSD during the war instead of after. So, to get away from it all he drugged up and shot himself in the foot to be shipped off to

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While fighting in a war soldiers form a special kind of bond. It is a unique brotherhood that only other soldiers of war can understand. O’Brien states that, “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die” (pg. 86, para. 10). In the article, “Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried: Initial Reception and Detailed Analysis,” Robert C. Evans (2015), explains that O’Brien uses this phrase as a way to remind the reader of the emotional baggage carried by the soldiers and how it can be at least as burdensome as physical weight, if not more so because emotional baggage is harder to shed or put down.

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Through centuries of great wars and battles, history has displayed brave men and women who have fought for their countries. These audacious people have helped propel countries for the greater good. However, the weight and responsibility, of the war, takes a heavy toll on soldiers that is often overlooked. Tim O’Brien, author of the novel The Things They Carried, records his stories, and the stories of his fellow soldiers during the war. However, three of these soldiers are affected in an outlandish way.

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One often recalls the pounds and pounds of gear soldiers in war must carry: rifle, knife, helmet, body armor, grenades, and many more. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien begins the novel with a detailed description of the physical gear soldiers carried in Vietnam; with each listed item, the total weight of a soldier’s equipment slowly grew into a massive number. One would assume the equipment would prove to be a soldier’s largest burden in the battlefield. Although the soldiers in Vietnam certainly carry backbreaking amounts of equipment, their emotional and psychological burdens far outweigh their physical gear. “Grief, terror, love, longing - these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had

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Have you ever been in such a stressful situation while trying to think normal? In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the author describes the situations these troops are put through. Along with the situations, the author tells the audience the thoughts and feelings going on with the men. Showing that the men are affected by the situations they are exposed to. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien explains the equipment that the characters need to carry to be prepared for the worst.

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1362 Words | 6 Pages

The town refuses to hear the horror stories, nonetheless they continue to celebrate America. In the chapter on Bowker's twelfth circulation, the fireworks start to go off. It's Independence Day and there's a huge show celebrating America and its victory in war, shiny lights in the sky like shiny medals on a uniform, but Bowker is still alone, with no one listening to his unspeakable thoughts. Thus he has a hard time coping with his bagage and ends up losing his battle with society. In the article “The Psychological Effects of Vietnam War” expresses the Veteran attitudes toward life at home.

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1504 Words | 7 Pages

Even after all these years, O’Brien is still unable to get the images of Vietnam out of him head, specifically of the man he killed. In the novel, he repeats the description of the man numerous times, almost to the point of excess, saying,“he was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole” (124).

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Rat Kiley, medic and soldier, who identifies as a savior of lives, but after one game gone wrong, he accidentally takes one. After passing a live grenade to Curt Lemon and killing him, Kiley “lost his best friend in the world,” and takes his anger on a water buffalo and goes “automatic. He shot randomly, almost casually”(O’Brien 75). Although this act of violence seems random, it shows the effects of death and how it comes up in different ways for these mentally tormented soldiers. After causing the death of his friend, Kiley couldn’t cope so he inflicted his anger onto the closest thing available.

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How he can 't wait to see my goddamn medals. " During this conversation he is getting frustrated that medals is all that is expected of him. Before this went on and on about how important it was to earn medals, but this statement he made shows he only thought it was important because he sought approval from his father. In the end Bowker committed suicide because he felt that he had no purpose, and his life was a waste. The medals didn’t matter to him after the war, they didn’t give him purpose and they didn’t save him.

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