The Things They Carried Tone Analysis

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brian , which shifts from the things the soldiers found memorible to all the tragedies of war, uses powerful diction, exhibits beautiful detail, and portrays the perfect tone to convey that friendships are always needed because sometimes they shed light on the hardest times. O’Brian’s tone and diction, throughout the book, creates a sense of meloncholy and anger. In the beginning of the book, O’Brian portrayed the souldiers as, “ Carriers of all the emotional baggage of men who might die.”(pg 20) A souldier carries enough of their own baggage that eventually over time they will carry to much of the worlds baggage, that it will take a tole on a person. Even the strongest of the men, could break down as if their entire worlds are being shattered. O’Brian and Norman Bowker, never really had that tight

They saw each other as friends but also as team mates. Norman Bowker was an emotional man who is self- loathing and held so much guilt after the death of Kiowa. Bowker never really knew what to do with his life after the war and turned to O’Brian to tell his story for him. O’Brian felt a bit of pity for the man when he killed himself in a YMCA locker room one afternoon.(pg 149) When he recieved the letter of all the emotions running through Bowkers mind, O’Brian said, “Norman Bowker’s letter hit me hard. For years ive felt a certain smugness about how easy i had made the shift from war to peace.” (pg 151) O’Brian never really found a connection with Norman until after the letter was written. Norman Bowker was carrying so much weight of being in the war that eventally it did the worst thing possible to him, it killed him. No soldier wants to hear about a member of their troop die because they were fighting battles inside their own mind of