What Are The Themes In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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. Rat Kiley, Norman Bowker, and Tim O’Brien are not the only three characters but the ones whose experience with the war will be touched on and show how they dealt with the war after leaving and the reasons some of them left.
Looking at the first soldier, Bob, AKA “Rat” Kiley, was a war medic during the Vietnam war who had a trusting relationship with the narrator, Tim O’Brien. O’Brien

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. In this chapter it is revealed that Bowker had written a letter to O’Brien talking about how he couldn't find meaning in his life and how he wasn't able to keep a job or stay in school. Bowker struggled to fit in with society after the war and find a purpose and is what likely led to him hanging