The Things They Carried: A Simply Gripping Title

Daniel Bartle
Ms. Prax
Intro to Literature CIS
01/18/2023
A Simply Gripping Title Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, is a war story about the Vietnam war, originally published in 1990. Rather than writing the novel in a typical fashion with a single plot line and overarching theme, Tim O’Brien instead chose to escape the confines of convention, and instead The Things They Carried portrays his experiences in Vietnam during the war as a collection of short, distinct stories and recollections featuring the same set of characters throughout the novel. Overall, this method of storytelling weaves a solemn environment that draws the reader deeper into the emotions and events of the story. To begin, Tim O’Brien recollects his uncertainty

Because of the sliced nature of the story, it is nearly impossible to provide a shorthand summary of the middle of the book that adequately describes the action. Unfortunately, the best way to describe the majority of the book is as a randomly sequenced collection of short stories, each with a dedicated chapter, detailing various experiences Tim O'Brien had in Vietnam. The story ends on a somber note with a chapter where O'Brien recalls his first childhood sweetheart, Linda, who died of a brain tumor when she was nine years old. This essay will focus on a historical analysis of The Things They Carried and how Tim O’Brien’s own experiences affected the composition of the novel. The analysis will begin with an investigation into the time period in which the story was written and how it coincides with major events predating the publication date, it will then move on to analyzing what key issues the novel was written about, and finally, an investigation into the circumstances in the author's life that brought about the creation of this novel. However, before an analysis of a work of literature can be properly

The Vietnam war was publicly abhorred throughout the entire length of the conflict. As said by Dori Starnes,
“Two things mainly drove the protests that cropped up and divided the country during the Vietnam War. The first was the draft, which forced many unwilling men, often in their teens, to fight in a war across the world. The other major factor in the protests were the high number of casualties the Vietnamese people suffered at the hands of soldiers on both sides of the conflict. More than half a million Vietnamese civilians, many of them women and children, died during the conflict.”
Of the soldiers that did return from the Vietnam War, many experienced extreme PTSD and found it difficult, if not nearly impossible, to reintegrate into society upon their return. Therefore, the Vietnam War had a lasting effect on society long after the war officially ended. It should come as no surprise then that much literature was written about the Vietnam War, with The Things They Carried, only being one of many examples of such literature. Within the novel, O’Brien directly states several times that he took up writing as a method to deal with the guilt and sorrow he experienced during the Vietnam