The heaviest of the weightless load was fears that they would not speak of, or perhaps could not speak of, lest it come alive and eat up their sanity. Instead, they shallowly laughed off the threat of death in this war, all the while alienating each other, thinking that this isolation wouldn’t allow their fellow soldiers to see how afraid they were of the dark shadow of death. It’s easy to feel the weight bearing down on the soldiers shoulder’s as O’Brien goes over the detailed list of items strapped to these men’s backs. Perhaps the most haunting of his words being “They all carry the emotional baggage of men who might die.” Nonetheless, they marched on.
The irony in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is crucial to understanding that the mental burden the soldiers carry are heavier than their physical burdens. Each soldier is required to carry their entire lives on their back throughout their tour in Vietnam. The soldiers carried not only weapons and the means of survival, but individual objects that are unique to them. While the individuality of the tangible objects that each soldier carried is supposed to keep them sane, it is these very objects that provides an even heavier mental burden of guilt and pain that eventually drove them to insanity.
While fighting in a war soldiers form a special kind of bond. It is a unique brotherhood that only other soldiers of war can understand. O’Brien states that, “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die” (pg. 86, para. 10). In the article, “Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried: Initial Reception and Detailed Analysis,” Robert C. Evans (2015), explains that O’Brien uses this phrase as a way to remind the reader of the emotional baggage carried by the soldiers and how it can be at least as burdensome as physical weight, if not more so because emotional baggage is harder to shed or put down.
The Burdens They Carried: whether physical, emotional, or psychological, they affect the lives of many. Throughout the human experience, burdens have been something individuals carry with them, often acquired in times of adversity. In The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, the novel focuses heavily on depicting the weight of these burdens in the setting of the Vietnam War. O’Brien utilizes literary elements such as imagery, symbolism, and selective writing techniques to portray the theme of burdens. Not only the physical encumbrances of equipment, but also the psychological bearings of death and violence.
Death Is a Powerful Motivator In “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien, the author, portrays his own experience in the Vietnam War. Although O’Brien fabricated some of the stories and exaggerated some of the parts, the main idea O’Brien wished to display is present. He wanted to allow the reader a view of the war along with the physical burdens and emotional burdens the soldiers carried with them. These burdens effected the soldiers and helped define them as people.
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a short story that discusses burden, love, and sacrifice. The story is narrated by O’Brien and it relays his experiences and actual battles he was involved in when he had served time in the Vietnam War. He uses strong emotional appeal to show the readers how awful and gruesome the war was. He mentions a lot about carrying weight both physically and emotionally by stating many things that relate such as “They shared the weight of memory” and “They carried each other, the wounded or the weak. They carried infections.”
The short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a snapshot of the daily life of a US soldier’s during the Vietnam War. O’Brien introduces us to a group of men and gives us a small glimpse into the hardships during the conflict. The title gives us an idea of the story content, the things the soldiers carry are not just the items in their rucksack, but also the weight of their fear, guilt, and desperation. Mr. O’Brien uses many literary devices in hi story including symbolism. One example of O’Brien’s use of symbolism in “The Things They Carried” is his description of the pebble sent to First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross by a girl back home.
The author was writing the story “The Things They Carried” expressed so many thoughts and feelings about what the soldiers had faced, they showed their feelings and duties, life or death, and overall fear and dedication. This story shows the theme of the physical and emotional burdens that everyone is going through in the war. By showing his readers what the soldier’s daily thoughts are and how they handle what is going on around them. Tim O’Brien expresses this theme by using characterization, symbolism, and tone continuously. In the story, physical and emotional burdens plagued several characters as they all had baggage weighing them down.
Many men knew the Vietnam War was not a fight they could get behind. These men knew they could not fight for something they so heavily
In Tim O’Brian’s book, The Things They Carried, he tells the story of Tim who serves in the Vietnam war and is immersed in a war filled with death. O’Brian through his theme of death helps create a story that illustrates the horrors of war, and shows how soldiers carried death both physically and psychologically. For instance, O’Brian conveys how closely war and death are associated together. On page 77, O’Brian writes, “At its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it corresponding proximity to life” (77). This quote illustrates, how by coming close to dying, one can appreciate life that much more.
The book, The Things They Carried by Tim O’brien shows us how a true war story should be told. This book follows a platoon of soldiers fighting in The Vietnam War and reveals the truth about war through their struggles. O’brien argues that “A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it.
In November of 1955, the United States entered arguably one of the most horrific and violent wars in history. The Vietnam War is documented as having claimed about 58,000 American lives and more than 3 million Vietnamese lives. Soldiers and innocent civilians alike were brutally slain and tortured. The atrocities of such a war are near incomprehensible to those who didn’t experience it firsthand. For this reason, Tim O’Brien, Vietnam War veteran, tries to bring to light the true horrors of war in his fiction novel The Things They Carried.
Alyssa Ramirez Mrs. Hill AP Language & Composition H 14 March 2023 Different Worlds When soldiers are asked to kill for their country they have little to no room for the consideration of morality within their actions; but what road do they walk to ever give up such a human trait? The American novelist, Tim O'Brien, wrote many stories highlighting his experiences of the Vietnam War and touched on, not only the struggles of the war but also the path soldiers take that others fail to mention. O´Brien believed that ¨storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is¨ to tell (“Chicago Public Library”). One of his most well-known novels, The Things They Carried, is a collection of linked stories based
The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.
Tim O'Brien's “The Things They Carry,” tells a story about the lives of young men during war. The narrator tells his story from first person, marking all of his adventures and experiences of his companions. O’Brien crafts his piece through the use of repetition, symbolism, and metaphors to convey the idea of physical and psychological hardships of soldiers during war. Though the literary device of repetition, O'Brien portrays the physical and psychological hardships of a soldier.
