The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

The Things They Carried illustrates the immense costs and endless tragedies of war. Whether regarding the human or societal costs of war, the negative consequences are readily apparent. In the short story collection, Tim O’Brien uses autobiographical metafiction to depict the realities of the Vietnam War. Within the novel, Norman Bowker is a member of O’Brien’s platoon and becomes the focus of a number of O’Brien’s stories. One of these stories, “Speaking of Courage”, depicts Bowker circling a lake, years after the war. He is unable to talk to anybody about the war and is withholding guilt over the death of his friend and fellow soldier, Kiowa. Throughout, he provides a disjointed account of how he failed to save Kiowa, describing the “shit

Because of the traumatic and uncivilized nature of the war, the soldiers who were emerged in the war underwent significant changes and faced difficulties adjusting back to normal life. The style which O’Brien writes his stories emphasizes the stark contrast between the two worlds. In “Notes” O’Brien describes the original version of “Speaking of Courage,” claiming that “I managed to erase the story’s flaws from my memory, taking pride in the shadowy, idealized recollection of its virtues” (O’Brien 153). He modifies the events in order to make the stories readable for the general public, and in doing so he creates these stories somewhere in between the realities of the war and what the public wants to visualize. The deeply disturbing events portrayed throughout the novel provide a glimpse into the dark areas of war not seen by society. In providing this glimpse, we see that O’Brien is stuck somewhere in the middle. He is unable to escape the past of the war, unable to completely re-emerge himself back into society. He is forced into writing as a release for the war, unable to progress fully back into a normal role in society. Additionally, the nature of his writing furthers the entrapment which the veterans feel toward the war. Professor, Robert Steven Kaplan claims “Each time we, the readers of The Things They Carried, return to Vietnam through O'Brien’s labyrinth of stories, we become more and

The guilt of the war is present within Norman and O’Brien and is unshakeable even decades after the war. In addition, the repetitive disturbances of the war highlight the flaws of those present leading to lifelong self-condemnation. The vast gap between civilization and war establishes a tretourous path for the soldiers back into society. The illustration of post-war life provided by O’Brien serves not to reveal the whole reality of the war, but its impacts. A cause and effect analysis, leaving out much of the gore and inhumanities of the war, in hopes that the glimpse provided would be enough to allow the public to see not the questionable ethics of war by both sides, but the impact that the life of a soldier has. The mental toll is brutal and can destroy even the best men as it did Norman Bowker, or the mental control it has gained upon O’Brien himself. War is destructive,