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The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: An Analysis

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Throughout The Things They Carried, author, and narrator, Tim O’Brien uses what the soldiers figuratively carry, cowardice and loss, to explain what effect the war had on them. According to O’Brien, these two intangibles turn into a physical burden the soldiers are forced to carry because of the psychological effects of war. His main purpose for writing The Things They Carried is for the reader to be able to feel the same reality the soldiers feel as a result of fighting in the war.
One of the main themes of these war stories is the fear of being labeled a coward by the people of the soldiers’ home country. The first example of cowardice in The Things They Carried when O’Brien received his draft notice and decided to go to Canada, temporarily, …show more content…

O’Brien explains what he thinks about the draft by combining his feelings of confusion and anger. After spending some time in Canada, O’Brien …show more content…

After Bowker returned home from Vietnam, he had the most trouble, out of all the soldiers, re-adjusting to everyday life. According to O’Brien, Bowker is someone who believes the success of men is measured by the amount of awards and/or medals they receive. As a result of the relationship between Bowker and his father, a former veteran, Norman feels the need to tell people about his experiences in order to get approval from his father. However, because of the horrors he witnessed in Vietnam, he felt it was better if people did not know. For example, the text states, “It [the town] did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know.” (O’Brien 137). Since Bowker feels it is his fault that Kiowa died, he cannot come to tell his father the truth of what happened overseas because of the assumed rejection Bowker believes he will receive. In the chapter “Speaking of Courage”, Norman has an imaginative conversation with his father about his time in Vietnam. He fantasizes relaying to his father the story behind why he almost earned the Silver Star and how he thinks his father will respond. For instance, O’Brien writes, “He [Bowker] looked out across the lake and imagined the feel of his tongue against the truth…’Seven. Count ‘em. You weren't a coward either.’ ‘Well, maybe not. But I had the cancel and I blew it.’” (O’Brien 136). Here, Bowker imagines telling his

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Bowker had become stuck in time, not being able to move forward from the war. When he spoke to his father, the only subject he seem capable to discuss was the war. Norman brought something home from the war which many soldiers do, guilt. Bowker had to resolve the conflict between fear and courage. The Silver Star, is an ultimate honorable award for a soldier, which Norman desperately wanted to win.

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Bowker is back home trying to readjust to life after the war. He didn’t know how to act or what to say, and others didn’t know what to say to him. Norman carried the weight of the shame and guilt that the war caused from the death of Kiowa, of whom he felt he could have saved. Norman could not stop thinking about the war and could even tell what time it was based on the sun, “The sun was lowered now. Five fifty five, he decided.

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A hidden thought Bowker has is that is wishes he didn’t have the desire to make his father proud. He does reveal this to Tim O’Brien. Since he did not save soldier Kiowa, Bowker did not receive the silver medal that his father wants. Aside from the guilt, he is unable to carry his pride because his father refuses to speak to him.

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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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In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien expresses to the reader why the men went to the war and continued to fight it. In the first chapter, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien states “It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather they were too frightened to be cowards.” The soldiers went to war not because they were courageous and ready to fight, but because they felt the need to go. They were afraid and coped with their lack of courage by telling stories (to themselves or aloud) and applied humor to the situations they encountered.

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Bowker had felt immense guilt for the Kiowa's death, in the chapter " Speaking of Courage” Bowker imagined how he would tell his father the story of his medals and how he almost won the silver medal but blew it when he let Kiowa sink into the muck. In “Speaking of Courage” Bowker is driving around the lake on the fourth of July in his father's Chevy where he realizes he has nowhere to go. He is reminiscing about his high school girlfriend, sally Kramer and the medals he earned while in the war but is still stuck on the silver star medal he almost got. In the next chapter, “Notes,” O’Brien says that “Speaking of Courage” was written at the request of Bowker.

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In the afternoon that his draft notice arrives, Tim O’Brien thinks about it for a while. For himself, he hates the war so much because certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. Besides, he cannot give himself a reasonable explanation to go to the war even kill innocent people. Most importantly, he does not prepare anything for the draft notice and trying to get rid of it. Individuals must be prepared to accept the changing circumstances because escaping cannot solve the problem.

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In Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried,” about the Vietnam war, courage is described as a necessity for all soldiers. He uses both him and his comrade’s circumstances to describe this. Throughout the novel the motif of courage evolves as characters serve in the Vietnam War. Being drafted into the Vietnam war forced O’Brien to become a soldier and participate in the war. His distaste for the war made it difficult for him to find the mental courage to fight in Vietnam which he thought was avoidable.

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Veterans who come back from war have trouble with feeling guilty from what they’ve seen happen and what they had to do. In war, guilt has detrimental effects on many of the soldiers even driving Norman Bowker to suicide. Tim O’Brien struggles to tell certain stories because of the effect guilt have on him and he says “Even now, I'll admit, the story makes me squirm. For more than twenty years

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Lastly I would like to bring up the story when O’Brien was telling us the story of Kiowa. “Norman Bowker remembered how he had taken ahold of kiowa 's boot and pulled hard, but how the smell was simply to much, and how he’d backed of and in that way had lost the silver star. ”(TTTC, Pg 153) Norman bowker gets overwhelmed with thoughts after he is talking about how he “could’ve” prevented himself from not getting the “silver Star.”

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