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Tim O 'Brien's The Things They Carried'

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The Lives of the Dead. In October of 2012 I visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC. I walked down the ramp examining the wall and the list of names on it. As we searched for the name of a friend of my Grandfather, an army veteran that served with him in Vietnam. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of despair. It is one thing to read the number of casualties, it is another to look at the names of the men we lost. It has been over 40 years since the end of the Vietnam War, yet the pain of this conflict is as real for those who experienced it Today as it was when they were there. If time heals all wounds, then how much will pass before atonement has been achieved? The book The Things They Carried is one man’s struggle to come to terms with the pain he experienced and caused. If you asked someone what the topic of the book is they would probably tell you that it is about war. They would be mistaken, The things they carried is a book about love and loss. Across the entire book the stories “The Things They …show more content…

It also details the death of one of his fellow soldiers, Tim Lavender. Killed while separated from the rest of the men by a sniper. His death is taken harshly by the platoon’s leader a young Lieutenant Cross. Cross was distracted by personnel effects given to him by a woman he cared for named Martha back in the United States. While it is unlikely that Lt. Cross could have saved Lavender even without the personnel effects, he blames himself for the loss of one of his men. His bitter experience, a combination of self-hatred and sorrow at the loss of a comrade hardens him. As a form of atonement, he destroys all the letters and pictures he has of Martha. Lt. Cross re-dedicates himself to his current predicament allowing no distractions to enable the loss of another of his

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War is one of the most complex yet completely understood subjects to read or write about. Tim O’Brien has captured the true essence of being drafted into a war. “The Things They Carried” is a novel composed of multiple short stories; Each taking the reader through the perspective of the narrator showing his multiple landscapes, situations, and changing feelings from being drafted into the Vietnam War to surviving it. These stories really help one understand the effects of war on someone’s mind as well as body. Tim O’Brien is the main character and protagonist in this novel.

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The book The Things They Carried was a book about a platoon of American Soldiers in the Vietnam War. Tim O'Brien wrote the book as the Author. Published on March 28 1990, with 233 pages. In the book the men had set up camp, which later found out to be a sink hole. The moltar started coming off the camp.

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Lieutenant Cross decided he must remove all distractions of Martha and home and begin to focus on his responsibilities. These unexpected losses helped Lieutenant Cross recognize his responsibility and aided him to become a leader who did not let his personal life obstruct with his duties as an officer. He burned Martha’s letters and photographs and threw away her good luck charm (O'Brien). No more fantasies, he told himself. Henceforth, when he thought about Martha, it would be only to think she belonged elsewhere (O'Brien).

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The transformation of Lieutenant Cross from a lovesick young man to a hardened commanding officer is slow, but steady. At first Cross is reading Martha's letters each night and imagines what she is doing. However, Cross begins to doubt Martha's love for him. And it is this distraction that results in the death of the soldier.

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For the majority of the chapter, Cross carried his mind in thoughts of Martha. He was obsessed with matters such as why she signed her letters “love”, and if she did love him or if that was just formality. Cross is unable to grieve in the ways his soldiers do; he distances himself and decides it’s better to be a leader than to be loved. The weight of the responsibility he carries for his men outweighed his love for Martha. The grieving process out-weighed his fantasies of love.

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Authors tend to make their opening scene the most important because in all reality it is the first chapter that hooks the reader. To help make this scene the most important, authors add themes and interesting information to convey the reader. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses themes such as courage, guilt, and the truth of the war to project his feelings. The significance of the opening scene is used to provide background information about the characters, the war, and the things they carried so that the reader can make connections to the rest of the novel and understand what is going on in later chapters. The Things They Carried has an effective opening scene because it shows what each individual soldier carried and the physical

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The Vietnam War was full of grief, heartache and tragedy, no one experienced this more than the soldiers who fought in it. Tim O’Brien shows the trauma the war has caused him in his book The Things They Carried. The story focuses on the character Tim, a member of Alpha Company, who tells his stories of the war. Many of these stories circle around guilt, and each character in the book has a different way of coping with it. One character, Kiowa, acts as the glue that holds Alpha Company together.

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He is conflicted with the emotional burden of loving Martha and his responsibility to his men. Cross is the Lieutenant of this platoon, meaning that he is their leader and ultimately responsible for the outcome of all their lives. Even though it is easy to see how these men need an escape to help them survive the daily task of fighting, the illusions of being somewhere else can result in additional weight being

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In the book, The Things They Carried written by Tim O’brien, after effects of war are one of the main themes. Not everyone makes it out of war alive and most who do come home never go back to who they were. The Things They Carried is a novel about the Vietnam war. This novel shows different soldiers' experiences but is narrated by Tim O’Brien and mainly talks about his experience with the war. In this novel, it touches the effect war has on soldiers during the war and how death was dealt with differently.

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Cross blames himself, knowing “He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead…” (p. 121). First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is distracted by his infatuation for Martha, which ultimately results in Ted Lavender’s death, forcing Cross to realize his fantasies for Martha are wrong and that he is not fulfilling his duties as a lieutenant. Lieutenant Cross is inattentive to the war and his responsibilities because he is unable and unwilling to stop thinking about his adoration for Martha.

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The story describes in detail the physical equipment each soldier carries, as well as the emotional baggage related to each item. One day, while soldier Ted Lavender is taking a bathroom break, he is shot and killed. Cross proceeds to blame himself for Lavender’s death as he was preoccupied with thoughts of Martha at the moment he was shot. The morning after, Cross digs a foxhole to put Martha’s letters and photos in and burns them. He believes he must let go of these desires to be as great a leader as possible for his troops.

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In Vietnam 1960-1970, as death surrounded the land and homes, a story was born. “The Things They Carried” by Tim O'Brien is a heartbreaking and shivering story. Through O’Brien’s writing, he manages to portray strength, courage, loss, and love in such a dark place and time. Before, during, and after the Vietnam War characters struggle with their emotional traumas, O’Brien illustrates the various coping mechanisms and how a variety of characters use them to survive their experiences during and post-war. O’Brien uses multiple characters to portray the mental damage war causes.

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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.

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Synthesis Essay In the Vietnam war, there were many soldiers at war with each other, and most soldiers were not prepared for the fight. In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien was in the Vietnam war when he was young. The book was not in order but he still talks about his experiences while in the war. His purpose for writing this novel was because he wanted younger audience to know what happened in the war and what the soldiers experienced.

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“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.

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