Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Written by author and Vietnam War veteran, Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried offers an introspective look at the life of soldiers both during and after conflict. Throughout the narrative, the book often blends reality and fantasy, with O’Brien using this approach to display the significance of stories and their impact on humanity. As O’Brien, writing as a fictional version of himself narrates the story, he describes both the material and metaphorical items that him and his fellow soldiers carry as a result of the war. The description of the items being carried by the soldiers provides characterization of each man in the novel, while also working to show the true weight of their emotions and state of mind. Though what is being described

For those who survive, guilt, grief, and confusion continually plague their minds. For example, Jimmy Cross confides in O’Brien that he has never forgiven himself for Ted Lavender’s death, saying that “It was something that would never go away.” Another soldier, Norman Bowker’s grief and confusion are so strong that he writes in a letter to 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.” It is later learned that Bowker committed suicide, Like the others, O’Brien demonstrates his own sense of guilt when describing his ordeal upon killing a Vietnamese soldier though as readers learn, his death as well as the events of the story are not entirely what they

As a result, it becomes impossible to know whether any event in the narrative truly happened to O’Brien. The aim in blending fact and fiction is to make the point that morals and objectiveness in a war story is irrelevant. Stories contain immense power, as they allow listeners and tellers to confront the past together and share in experiences and emotions that would otherwise separate them. At the later part of the novel, O’Brien suggests that the story and characters that make up The Things They Carried is imaginary. As he states, “I’m a writer now, and a long time ago I walked through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier. Almost everything else is invented.” However, though his stories may be fictional, the emotions and felling that O’Brien imbues within them are not. Though he himself did not kill a soldier like he had originally claimed, the truth of his feelings about the war are no less valid. The narration for the book takes place twenty years upon the wars conclusion. In that time much of what had happened has been left in a blur. It is at that point that O’Brien relates what he refers to as “the happening truth.” After twenty years, O’Brien is left “with faceless responsibility and faceless grief.” This is where stories become significant. Stories, as O’Brien argues can “make things present… I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and