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Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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The book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is about the Vietnam War and the physical and mental burdens that soldiers carried, but it is not just about the violence of war, it is also a love story. O’ Brien interweaves the characters of Mary Anne, Martha and Kathleen into the novel in sporadic ways that at first it just seems random, but it is done that way to remind the reader that sometimes there is no war without love, and that is the role of the women in this story. Each one of them serves the purpose of being a beacon of light that shines through the darkness that is war. One of the most influential female in O’Brien’s story is Kathleen, his ten year old daughter. She is one of the reasons that O’Brien explains his war experience …show more content…

One reason that he does this is because he believes that telling stories about someone makes it seem that they are still alive, even if their names have been changed. He could reinvent the soldiers that he served with, and make them heroic. “I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again” (B180). O’Brien put this story a little after “In the Field” because it gives the impression that although he experienced many tragedies during the war he was still able to find love in his family and his friends (comrades). Another significant female in The Things They Carried is Mary Anne Bell, Mark Fossie’s girlfriend. She appears in the chapter “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” when Mark flies her out to Vietnam to visit him. At first Mary is just like most seventeen year old girls. “This seventeen-year-old doll in her goddamn culottes, perky and fresh-faced, like a …show more content…

The truth may never be revealed, but one thing that is clear is that O’Brien purposefully told the story of Mary Anne to remind the reader that love can appear at the most unexpected of times, even in war. And although things did not work out between Mark and Mary it is never stated that he stopped loving her. Another person that is also very important to O’Brien’s reason behind his storytelling is
Linda, the first girl that “Timmy” fell in love with. She ended up dying in the fifth grade from a brain tumor and that was O’Brien’s first experience with morality. This makes O’Brien realize that sometimes you can’t have love without death and vice versa, hence his stories of love in a tale of war. One reason that O’Brien loves to tell stories is because it makes it seem as though
Linda is still alive. “But in a story I can steal her soul. I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging. In a story, miracles can happen. Linda can smile and sit up” (B236).
That is one of the reasons that O’Brien starts to write this story in the first place, to keep Linda alive, to animate the dead. That is why he tells the stories of Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon

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