Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

The war in Vietnam presented many challenges to the soldiers both physically and emotionally. In Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, the characters face physical challenges of what they are forced to carry to defeat the enemy. Along with the things they carried, the soldiers were also placed under enormous emotional challenges with death. The characters are forced to deal with their friends and combat partners being shot. This often leads to soldiers feeling like it was their fault for the death of their comrade. Throughout the story, O'Brien's characters are faced with the weight many burdens during the war, however, the weight of death and despair was much more relevant than the weight of physical items. In chapter one of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien displays the burdens the soldiers had of what they carried. Although many of the soldiers were already weighted down with their equipment for combat, many

Camped out in a flood zone of the Song Tra Bong, the smell of dead fish and waste overthrew the mind of Norman Bowker (p.139). That night the company fell under enemy mortar fire that churned up the smell that was deep in the soil (p.141). As the third mortar round hit, Bowker heard a scream from Kiowa, who had been hit and was slowly sinking in the muck. Bowker was trying to pull him free when the feces and the smell became too much for him to bear and he released Kiowa’s boot and allowed him to sink to his death (p.143). Years later, Bowker told the real Tim O’Brien, “The thing is there’s no place to go. Not just in this lousy little town. In general. My life, I mean. It’s almost like I got killed over in Nam… Hard to describe. That night when Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down into sewage with him… Feels like I’m still in deep shit.” (p.150). Three years after saying that to O’Brien, Bowker hanged himself in the local YMCA