The Opening Chapter In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Authors tend to make their opening scene the most important because in all reality it is the first chapter that hooks the reader. To help make this scene the most important, authors add themes and interesting information to convey the reader. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses themes such as courage, guilt, and the truth of the war to project his feelings. The significance of the opening scene is used to provide background information about the characters, the war, and the things they carried so that the reader can make connections to the rest of the novel and understand what is going on in later chapters. The Things They Carried has an effective opening scene because it shows what each individual soldier carried and the physical

For example, Ted Lavender is simply a young and frightened soldier that carries dope, tranquilizers, and extra ammo to ease his nerves from the war. Most soldiers had a physical object they carried to get their mind off of the war and had some sort of remedy while on the battlefield. This goes to show the effects the war had on the soldiers and their mental state throughout the violence of war. A few more examples would be Jimmy Cross who carried the photo of Martha. Henry Dobbins carries his girlfriend’s panty hose as his talisman during the war due to being superstitious. The religious Native American, Kiowa, carries an illustrated New Testament to have a reminder of his father. All of these soldiers have their own unique way of coping with the war. Whether it’s through an object that they carry or something like religion, each and every soldier had their way of surviving the war. This chapter has an exemplary way of describing each and every character in the novel and gives them an individual symbol that sticks with them throughout the