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Summary Of Tim O 'Brien's Novel The Things They Carried'

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What tangible and intangible things would you take to war with you?
What would you do if you got a draft card for a war which you don’t agree with?
How would you react to killing someone else while at war?
These are questions which the audience ask themselves while reading Tim O'Brien's novel The Things They Carried.

For a text to be meaningful, it needs to be able to have a significant impact on the audience with ideas that resonate and bring up new thoughts with its audience. In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, there were many internal conflicts which the characters Tim O’Brien and Lieutenant Jimmy Cross find themselves in while fighting in the external conflict of the Vietnam war. These internal conflicts are more meaningful …show more content…

What if they don’t want to fight, kill someone or be killed. These young men go through internal struggles like this when they are drafted to go to war, what if they die fighting for something they don’t support or get wounded in ways words can’t describe. In Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, the main protagonist in the story Tim O’Brien faces these internal struggles when he received his draft card. Personally, if I was in Tim’s position I would also struggle with the decision, to fight in a war which I don’t agree with. Tim's inner conflict occurred around if he didn’t go to war and escaped to Canada what would people think of him, he was afraid of being embarrassed in his small hometown called Worthington. One day Tim decides that he is going to the Canadian border, there he stays in a fishing lodge with the lodge’s owner, Elroy Berdahl. On Tim’s last day at the lodge, he goes fishing on the Rainy River with Elroy which separates Canada from America. Here is where Tim fully explores the idea of shame if he were to go to war or escape to Canada. While on the boat Tim had sudden flashbacks and started hallucinating, he saw people standing on either side of the Rainy River encouraging him to swim to their side, either to fight in the war on the American side or to escape on the Canadian side. The hallucination which Tim had experienced is able to allow the audience to consider the inner conflict which Tim was going through. The audience would consider the idea of shame and how much importance Tim had put on his reputation in his small town. Tim knew that he would be shunned by his community if he did not go to war. The fear of shame and being shunned was one of Tim’s motivating factors to go to war. Later in the book, after Tim had thought about his hallucination he said “All the eyes on me—the town,

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I can imagine myself in the story when I read it. By the way he wrote his book, I can tell that the book itself reflects all the characters’ fear, passions, necessities, and personalities, but mostly it reflects his. For example in chapter seven, “How to Tell a True War Story”, Tim says

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Literary Analysis on Short Stories In the short story of Tim O'brien's The Things They Carried uses symbolism to suggest that items that the soldiers Kiowa, Lavender and Cross carried represent their values and where they come from. O'brien successfully shows in depth what each character mentioned in the short story represents in relation to the narrator by mentioning the items and memories that each individual carried.

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Dodging the Draft Tim O’Brien’s famous novel The Things They Carried really starts when Tim, a recent college graduate with a full scholarship to Harvard, gets a draft notice for the Vietnam War. Throughout chapter four “The Rainy River” Tim ingeniously uses language to describe his pain, flashbacks of his younger self and vivid detail of the setting around him to dramatize his dilemma of either to flee to Canada or stay and fight in the war.

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In the short story “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien, the main character Tim O’Brien gets a letter notifying him that he has been selected for the draft; he is affected by this emotionally, physically, and he faces a moral dilemma because this war goes against what he believes in. Immediately upon receiving the letter O’Brien thinks, “I was too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything. It couldn’t happen. I was above it” (1003).

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Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

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The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, illustrates the experiences of a man and his comrades throughout the war in Vietnam. Tim O’Brien actually served in the war, so he had a phenomenal background when it came to telling the true story about the war. In his novel, Tim O’Brien uses imagery to portray every necessary detail about the war and provide the reader with a true depiction of the war in Vietnam. O’Brien starts out the book by describing everything he and his comrades carry around with them during the war. Immediately once the book starts, so does his use of imagery.

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When Tim was put into this dilemma he would be able to feel the shame and guilt off of others if he didn’t go to war. His peers, family members and community would never forgive him for going to Canada; they would think as him as a disappointment because he didn’t have the ability to stand up and fight for his country. “There were times when [he] thought [he’d] gone off the psychic edge”(P.48), which would be his natural reaction for being guilted into doing something that he didn’t want to do. He was ashamed that others around him were capable of going to war and he wasn’t, for this reason, instead of going to Canada he went to go and fight. Tim was influenced by the people around him because if he didn’t do what they wanted then he would feel this level of guilt and shame that would last a lifetime.

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This quote from the short story illustrates how Tim felt about leaving for the war. He knew that it was against his beliefs for him to leave. He eventually left for the war, still not believing in what he was fighting for which resulted in Tim losing sight of who he was. He allowed the pressures of society to influence him and morph his character into one resemblant of the popular belief of the time. In the story of The Book Thief, Hans Hubermann experiences a similar situation to Tim.

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There was no sense of morality or politics or duty. Tim completed what he was trained to do, and that was to defend the camp against the enemy. The lone soldier was the enemy. Later Tim views his actions as impulsive and regrets throwing the grenade, despite his peers’ support. Tim declares, “Sometimes I forgive myself, sometimes I don’t.

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A lot happens in Tim O 'Brien short story "The Things They Carried", at first, the reader speculates what the short story is about and why it is called "The Things They Carried". The narrator Tim O 'Brien tells and describes all the things that the men have to carry while "in-country" during the Vietnam War in the1960 's. The text 's artistic value comes from its plot, characters, conflict, and style. In the plot of the story the protagonist, Tim O 'Brien starts by describing circumstances that happened while he was in Vietnam. In the beginning of "The Things They Carried" we are introduced to each character by the things they carry.

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“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.

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Author Tim O’Brien, in his novel The Things They Carried, indicates the mental, emotional, and physical changes they go through due to the Vietnam War. The novel shows the obligation and burden the soldier’s go through to perform their duties, despite their own personal beliefs and experiences. O’Brien’s purpose is to illustrate the moral dilemma and internal struggle soldier’s experience in order to survive the true nature of war, as well as the fear and obligation that they have to cope with throughout their time spent at war. War forced the soldier’s morality to be stripped from their beliefs in order to perform their duties, causing soldiers moral dilemma.

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I went to the war.” (last paragraph 58) This helps us understand that going to war was not an accomplishment for Tim. He regretted not running away and hated that he went.

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