In the book The Things They Carried by Tim o’Brien many war heroes don't always come back home the way they left. Throughout these stories readers can really see and understand what a few soldier encountered on the field. The author portrayed these through changes in tone. Three tones that are provided in the story are discouraged, miserable, and thankful. Being in the war can really change a person inside and out.
The Things They Carried is about Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the leading officer of a band of soldiers in the Vietnam War. It is written by Tim O’Brien. Jimmy falls in love withe girl named Martha who is back home attending college. He carries a couple of pictures and letters that she has sent. The group comes across a runner and they draw numbers to see who has to go in to check it out.
Throughout the story “The Things They Carried” Lieutenant Cross’ character goes from being a boy at war, to a man that will execute orders sternly to get his men home alive. His character goes through a large change in a short period of time and he is described as having a “new hardness in his stomach (437).” In the story he uses the stone from Martha as a coping mechanism to transition himself into the man he now is. Lieutenant Cross uses the hardness of the stone to create the hardness in his gut when it is implied that he swallows the stone, and this action also signifies the burying of the feelings for Martha deep down.
The Things They Carried details a young naive man’s life that changes after being drafted into the Vietnam War. The author Tim O’Brien shares with us the many tragedies that are engraved in his memory. Throughout the book he tells stories about the lives(right) of the dead. As he writes the stories, he dreams about the dead, so in his mind they are alive and have returned back into the world. The reader can feel the struggle that Tim has in relieving the pain of losing these people.
Tim Obrien’s 1990 story “The Things They Carried” describes the experience of a group of soldiers in the Vietnam War. The soldiers are under the responsibility of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. With Jimmy, he carries his love for Martha, and it distracts him from his duty. In the end, he tries to forget Martha because he thinks the death of Ted Lavender is his fault because he was distracted. Respectively, each soldier carries assets that are material and mental.
The short story, “The Things They Carried,” written by Tim O’Brien (1990), appears to be an unpretentious narration that list the tangible items carried by the soldiers while fighting in the Vietnam War. Upon further review it becomes clear that the lists of “things” have a much deeper meaning and carry an abundance amount of emotional weight. Not only is their load a physical burden that consist of hefty equipment that is necessary for survival, but they also bear the burden of internal conflict. The internal conflicts identified in the story center around the disturbing afflictions carried by the soldiers revealing that the men long for an escape from their dreadful surroundings, feel responsible for the lives of their fellow soldiers,
Through centuries of great wars and battles, history has displayed brave men and women who have fought for their countries. These audacious people have helped propel countries for the greater good. However, the weight and responsibility, of the war, takes a heavy toll on soldiers that is often overlooked. Tim O’Brien, author of the novel The Things They Carried, records his stories, and the stories of his fellow soldiers during the war. However, three of these soldiers are affected in an outlandish way.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a collection of essays, all centered on anecdotes of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. The seemingly straightforward recollections slowly reveal dense layers of personal and metaphorical meanings upon closer inspection, with the exploration of the characters’ emotions and the underlying motif of love creating the opportunity to trace how war changes a person in the realm of his emotions. The Vietnam warfare acts as a catalyst for all of the unsettling changes in the soldiers’ minds, raising the question whether the battlefield is actively responsible for this result or merely accelerating the inevitable manifestation of these personal issues, inherent in every person. In the collection of essays
Emotionally dragging people down one by one, war brings sweat, tears, and blood. Although soldiers do carry many physical items, each individual also carries responsibilities which are not visible, but tend to weigh one down immensely, such as the lives of men. In the novel The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, he describes the items which the soldiers carried such as “taking up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections.
The Things They Carried, is a reflection on how Tim O’Brien spent his days in Vietnam. There are many factors to why it can be difficult to share a war story, there is no proof to tell how much he is just telling a story or saying something else to make it easier to share his experience. “In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. ”pg.68.
The novel The Things They Carried was set during the Vietnam War, describing fiction stories that were based off of true experiences. The chapter called “The Things They Carried” described the many things the soldiers had with them, and throughout the story it showed how these things affected their lives. Many of the things that the soldiers had with them were things that they needed, like ponchos, guns, matches and more. “Together these items weighed between 12 and 18 pounds,”(2). They may have had lots of necessities, but that didn’t stop them from bringing the things that meant the most to them.
Tim O’Brien’s short story, The Things They Carried, is a Vietnam War veterans auto fictional tale of his experience in Vietnam. The story sets out to give a surreal look at the Vietnam War’s effects on the soldiers who fought it, and give some insight into a war that is still debated to this day. For me, the major themes I saw in the story were about the burden each soldier held, and how each soldier had their own way to try and escape the horrors they faced. The major, unifying theme of the story was about the burdens each soldier carried with them through their time in Vietnam. However, the burdens each man carries varies from their SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) gear such as canteens, ammunition, and helmets, to personal items such as comic books, photographs, or even dope.
Entry 1 In the first chapter titled “The Things They Carried,” the author said that they carried the physical items like ponchos and ammunition, but what resonated with me was how he described the intangible things that each of them carried. They carry the life that they left back in the United States. I can’t imagine what it would be like to leave the life that’s lived for eighteen years to fight for something that’s not even clearly understood.
In the United States, we may say that social and economic discrimination no longer exists, however, racism and classism still apply in society today. An example of this is in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, when Atticus Finch suspects that Mayella Ewell’s injuries don't match up to the story she and her father Bob Ewell are telling, so Atticus asks Tom Robinson to catch a ball and he catches it with his right hand as opposed to Bob Ewell who is left-handed. In the scene, Lee uses characterization and dialogue that Mayella uses to convey the theme that racism and classism rely on power structures that serve to diminish the importance of other human lives. This is important to the novel because it shows how racism affects the town of Maycomb. They knew Bob Ewell hit his daughter, but because Tom Robinson was a black man, he fell in the lowest class in their society.
“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.
