Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

The Things They Carried is a collection of stories written by Tim O’Brien to depict what soldiers, including himself, had experienced while fighting across seas in the Vietnam War. The collection of stories begins with a section titled “The Things They Carried”. Tim O'brien is the main character, and he is a soldier fighting with his fellow comrades in a group named Alpha Company and he describes the belongings and equipment that each soldier carries while also providing a short background of a few men.

Many characters reappear throughout the collection of stories that are told by Tim. For example, the first character that dies in Alpha company is a man named Ted Lavender; he is killed on his way back from using the bathroom. Ted is a soldier

Initially in 1968, he received his draft notice, but the fear of war causes him to flee north to the Canadian border, where he contemplates whether he should or should not cross in order to avoid being drafted into a war that he does not believe in. After he contemplates his decisions on a lake, he decides that he does not wish to disappoint his family back home and concludes that his political desires surely have no significance in this situation. Following this fateful decision, he returns to Minnesota and later travels to Vietnam. Furthermore, a few more members of the Alpha Company are killed during their mission overseas. One of these includes Curt Lemon, a soldier in alpha company who is killed when he steps on a rigged mortar

Magill further explains that even though the book’s plot is not too easily discussed, nor is it easily categorized using conventional means, a great deal of events occur in the story. Magill states that it is the stories of others told through the voice of their fellow soldier when he says, ”It is essentially the stories of men...of Alpha Company, generally filtered through the voice of the narrator…” (Magill 1906). This narrator happens to be just how Tim is in real life. According to Magill, this creates a double vision which is, “that of a forty-three-year-old writer, considering the Vietnam War from a distance, and the impressions of a young soldier who finds himself in the middle of war he does not believe in…”(Magill