Vietnam In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

A novel written about the debatably unnecessary war in Vietnam, The Things They Carried authentically paid tribute to those that served for the United States in the fight against communism. The lives of these soldiers were talked about descriptively by the author of the book, Tim O’Brien as he had a great ton of experience in the war being that he was able to survive long enough to have two different medics in his squadron as well as strongly prefer one over the other. The war veteran showcased the effect the war had on a person with the example of Mark Fossie’s visitor that never left (Mary Anne). She adapted to the war very quickly and gradually became less recognizable by Mark. O’Brien made it clear that war was unable to be explained to

The reality of the war was that everyone expected to die and each soldier began to slowly accept the likeliness of themselves never going home. He uses this mindset the soldiers acquire to show how mortal every single character is regardless of what it is they carry. The reason why most of them carry a certain thing is either for good luck because they know that they are going to need it or for the simple reason that it will help them survive the humid environment that has a bug problem. The reality of the war is spoken about in this excerpt, “Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believe in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait” (O’Brien 200-201). The last sentence makes the writers point very clear when he talks about how war films may have a happy ending, but Vietnam never did. The writer makes it sound as if fighting in this war is comparable to a death sentence. This high death rate and denial of anything close to heroism that appears in the movies on this topic is once again another reason why The Things They Carried did not have a hero in