To thoroughly grasp the meaning, intention and significance of The Things They Carried, the reader must pull apart the novel.
Tim O’Brien was born in Austin, Minnesota and completed his bachelor’s degree in Political Science at Macalester College. In 1968, when he graduated, O’Brien was drafted into the United States Army and was sent to Vietnam in 1969. He served from 1969 to 1970 in 3rd Platoon, Company A, 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry Regiment. He was part of the division that had a unit involved in My Lai Massacre, and his unit was sent to contain the situation afterwards. After he returned home, he attended Harvard University for graduate school and then interned for the Washington Post.
The Things They Carried was not written chronologically
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as one combined piece of literature. Instead, the novel is a collection of 22 short stories bundled into a larger work. The story follows Tim O’Brien’s experiences as a soldier in the Vietnam War, and the mental, as well as the physical challenges that he and his platoon endured. The novel is heavily influenced by O’Brien’s own personal thoughts that are hidden and hard to detect. O’Brien’s feelings about war and how it is portrayed is undoubtedly impacted by his first-hand experiences. The novel focuses on many individual characters while O’Brien infers different characteristics of these people to understand how they think, and why they do the things that they do. The Things They Carried incorporates symbolism around Kiowa, O’Brien’s best friend and the most moral soldier. These morals stemmed from Kiowa’s religious beliefs and strong faith. He always carried a bible and moccasins with him that coincided with his culture, beliefs and heritage. This symbolism represents the type of man Kiowa was till his death. His values were able to withstand the war while many of the others were mentally falling apart, unable to deal with the horrors of war. Even when he was in a war zone, his belongings were his method of coping and reminded him that his faith and ethics were keeping him grounded. Kathleen is O’Brien’s “daughter” in this war story, who does not actually exist in real life. She herself is actually a symbol of the young United States that does not completely understand why this war was even fought anyway. Kathleen embodies the American attitude towards the Vietnam War confronting O’Brien about his obsession with writing war stories and his inability to forget about his experiences in the war. Kathleen wants her father to start writing happier stories; she cannot understand that the war will impact O’Brien for the rest of his life. The novel includes multiple literary elements, one of them being imagery.
The chapter “The Man I Killed” includes an in depth examination of the dead Vietnam man. Describing all of the man’s new physical attributes from a grenade explosion. “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman's, his nose was undamaged…” For a full page, O’Brien reminisces about the picture of the man that is now engrained in his head. He further analyzes all of these features deducing and making assumptions about personal details of the life of the dead man. “He would have been taught that to defend the land was a man's highest duty and highest privilege. He had accepted this. It was never open to question. Secretly, though, it also frightened him. He was not a fighter.” This chapter is also extremely influential to O’Brien, who uses imagery as a way to grasp his actions. O’Brien does not try to dull his pain or separate himself from the dead man. Giving the dead man a back-story only makes him more human making this kill so much less detached and much more personal. Kiowa tries to help O’Brien justify his actions, but O’Brien is not focused on the …show more content…
justification. The Vietnam War began in 1954 between communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam. During this period, the United States and communist Soviet Union were in a nuclear arms race known as the Cold War. The United States was fighting communism and the Soviet Union’s allies making North Vietnam a target. Dwight D. Eisenhower committed the U.S. to helping South Vietnam and provided extreme aid and equipment. The people living in the United States are disconnected from war. They will hear about some occurrences, but they will never truly understand the fear and emotions of the soldiers who are immersed in it. O’Brien is in the war. War is not something you can understand without being part of it. There are no outside parties that will have a soldier’s response engrained in their hearts, in their soul. There is sensibility, but no full grasp of a soldier’s situation. O’Brien detaches himself from politics, revealing no opinions about the war. A soldier and a politician view war very differently. To the U.S. government, this was a war that needed to be fought, but soldiers do take any politics into account when their life is on the line. O’Brien and the others do not know what they are fighting for. It is their duty, but they draw no determination from its purpose. It is ironic that O’Brien completely avoids the politics of this war when these politics are what completely changed his life. He never would have killed anyone, or met any of his platoon or any of the other characters. His life and many other veterans changed drastically because of this war, yet The Things They Carried is removed from Vietnam’s practice of communism and the purpose of fighting it. War changes people.
It alters the way you think; it changes your nature. O’Brien never explicitly stated this fact, but throughout his writing he makes it very obvious to the reader. Once the men left the United States, they were introduced to a new way of living. In the United States, everyone, for the most part, has warm shelter, food, and multiple sources of protection. The society is a community, the population is huge and we interact daily with many different people, many you will never even see again. The mindset of a United States citizen is much different than those who have been shipped to Vietnam. Soldiers must have an array of feelings; there are so many reactions that take place when you are sent a letter that states you must move to a different country and shoot people that you have never even met. There are no police in Vietnam. The only people in Vietnam that are speaking English are the soldiers. They have the freedom to do almost anything. Their job is to kill now – that is their only purpose. Again, no regular civilian would ever really understand this change because it is something they must experience. O’Brien reveals his platoons ethical breakdown in the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story”. The day that Curt Lemon dies from stepping on a rigged mortar shell, Rat captures a baby buffalo. He cares for it, petting her and feeding her some of his food. When it did not eat some of its food, Rat Kiley shot it. He shot it repeatedly careful to make sure that
he did not kill it. No one reacted – they all watched Kiley torture the animal. Once Kiley was done, the platoon discovered that the buffalo was actually still alive and instead of putting it out of misery with a shot to the head, they threw it in a village well. This would be crazily unacceptable in the United States. Honestly, these actions are more psychotic than anything else, but these men are different now. They have killed people, their morals are scrambled, and they do not know how to act “normal” any more. The only one who has held onto their religious beliefs is Kiowa, and he has managed to hang onto reality without losing his mind. O’Brien defines truth differently than what it actually is, especially towards any war stories. 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 they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. O’Brien reveals that it is the small, believable details that are lies, and the huge inconceivable events are actually real. O’Brien questions truth again with his make-believe daughter Kathleen. She thinks that O’Brien is obsessed with writing war stories because he had killed someone in the war. O’Brien lies to her and tells her he did not. Many veterans who came back from the Vietnam War probably lied about killing someone for different reasons, especially because of Kathleen, who represents young America, were too young to understand these soldier’s experiences. O’Brien lies because he does not think it is a lie. He reflects on his actions and the fatal grenade and decides that the impulse to protect his platoon and kill the man does not make him a killer. He imagines that this unknown man walks up the trail, smiles and continues on his way without even acknowledging O’Brien’s presence. O’Brien wishes that he and the young man had never crossed paths, because they should not have. In O’Brien’s head, the young man did not even want to be part of the war. He only did it to preserve honor in his family – to not be a disappointment. In a lecture called “Writing Vietnam” O’Brien states, “That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.” The Things They Carried is actually known as fiction. Before the novel even starts, this quote is part is used to describe the novel. “This is a work of fiction. Except for a few details regarding the author's own life, all the incidents, names, and characters are imaginary.” The line between reality and imaginary is blurred. Truth is questioned once again. There are so numerous characters that all have back-stories and complex backgrounds and personalities. Factually, O’Brien was part of a platoon involved in the cleanup of My Lai, but no one else will ever know if all of these occurrences really happened. O’Brien has dedicated his entire career to writing about the Vietnam War, and his most acclaimed piece is at the least questionably true. Each chapter of The Things They Carried was written separately without the original intention of combining these short stories into a novel. As a result, each chapter is written uniquely with different wordplay
An interesting combination of recalled events and editorial commentary, the story is not set up like a traditional short story. One of the most interesting, and perhaps troubling, aspects of the construction of “How to Tell a True War Story” is O’Brien’s choice to create a fictional, first-person narrator who might just as well be the author himself. Because “How to Tell a True War Story” is told from a first-person perspective and O’Brien is an actual Vietnam veteran, a certain authenticity to this story is added. He, as the “expert” of war leads the reader through the story. Since O’Brien has experienced the actual war from a soldier’s point of view, he should be able to present the truth about war...
The word "hero" is so often used to describe people who overcome great difficulties and rise to the challenge that is set before them without even considering the overwhelming odds they are up against. In our culture, heroes are glorified in literature and in the media in various shapes and forms. However, I believe that many of the greatest heroes in our society never receive the credit that they deserve, much less fame or publicity. I believe that a hero is simply someone who stands up for what he/she believes in. A person does not have to rush into a burning building and save someone's life to be a hero. Someone who is a true friend can be a hero. A hero is someone who makes a difference in the lives of others simply by his/her presence. In Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, the true heroes stand out in my mind as those who were true friends and fought for what they believed in. These men and women faced the atrocities of war on a daily basis, as explained by critic David R. Jarraway's essay, "'Excremental Assault' in Tim O'Brien: Trauma and Recovery in Vietnam War Literature" and by Vietnam Veteran Jim Carter. Yet these characters became heroes not by going to drastic measures to do something that would draw attention to themselves, but by being true to their own beliefs and by making a difference to the people around them.
The Things They Carried is a funny little book in the sense that it isn’t told how most books are. It goes from war to camping on the borderline of Canada, back to war, and then into present day times. It works marvelously well, showing you what actually happened and then what he thought about what happened and what he could have done to change the outcome. There are many things that I think people can learn from his experiences in the Vietnam war and the way he tells those stories and lessons really bring you along for the ride.
When O’Brien first arrives to Vietnam, the men of the platoon show him how the grief of war can be covered up by humor. As the men were patrolling near a village off the South China Sea they suddenly started to encounter sniper fire. The firefight only lasted a few minutes but Lt. Cross decided to order an airstrike on the village anyways. After the strike was over, the platoon proceeded to the smoldering village to find nothing but “…an old man who lay face up near a pigpen at the center of the village. His right arm was gone. At his face there were already many flies and gnats.”(). To many, this image of a destroyed village and the mutilated old man would cause horror and plight. Instead of that normal reaction, “Dave Jensen went over and shook the old man’s hand. “How-dee-doo,” he said.”(). The other men of the platoon also went up to the dead man’s body and shook his hand while adding a comment. This disturbing response the men have to the dead old man isn’t one of disrespect, it is their coping mechanism for realizing what they just did. Because O’Brien was new to Vietnam he had yet to understand why the men were all doing this. He was awestruck by the actions...
The novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’ Brien takes place in the Vietnam War. The protagonist, Lieutenant Cross, is a soldier who is madly in love with a college student named Martha. He carries around photos and letters from her. However, the first few chapters illustrate how this profound love makes him weak in the war.
Death is one of life's most challenging obstacles. Tim O'Brien was exposed to more than his fair share of death. To manage the emotional stress, he developed methods of coping with the death in his life. O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, demonstrates his attempts to make death less real through psychotherapeutic tactics like telling stories about the dead as if they were living and conceiving the dead as items instead of people.
Most of this story revolves around experiences that Tim O’Brien has had. And he certainly has changed from the beginning of the story (speaking chronologically) where he was no more than a scared civilian, who would do anything to escape such a fate as the draft. He would eventually become the war-hardened slightly cocky veteran that he is now. But it is only through his experiences that he would become who he is today. Through all the things he has witnessed. Whether it be watching curt lemon be almost literally "blown to heaven" to having killed a man and making assumptions about who he truly was. He made not have been most affected by the war, but it was he who was described in the most detail, due to the fact that he was describing in first person
The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is one of O'Brien's predominant themes in his novel. By consciously selecting very descriptive details that reveal the drastic change in manner within the men, O'Brien creates within the reader an understanding of the effects of war on its participants. One of the soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a Thumb. . .The Thumb was dark brown, rubbery to touch. . . It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen"(O'Brien 13). Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, yet war makes him into a very hard-mannered, emotionally devoid soldier, carrying about a severed finger as a trophy, proud of his kill. The transformation shown through Bowler is an excellent indicator of the psychological and emotional change that most of the soldiers undergo. To bring an innocent young man from sensitive to apathetic, from caring to hateful, requires a great force; the war provides this force. However, frequently are the changes more drastic. A soldier named "Ted Lavender adopted an orphaned puppy. . .Azar strapped it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device"(O'Brien 39). Azar has become demented; to kill a puppy that someone else has adopted is horrible. However, the infliction of violence has become the norm of behavior for these men; the fleeting moment of compassion shown by one man is instantly erased by another, setting order back within the group. O'Brien here shows a hint of sensitivity among the men to set up a startling contrast between the past and the present for these men. The effect produced on the reader by this contrast is one of horror; therefore fulfilling O'Brien's purpose, to convince the reader of war's severely negative effects.
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien may be a war story, but it is also a collection of stories about people. Not all of these stories are completely factual, either, but they were never intended to be. O’Brien presents these not-quite-truths not to deceive, but because while the real events may have been more factual, it didn’t mean they were more real. What is true and what is simply fabrication become interchangeable, bringing to life the chaotic experiences the author felt as a soldier in the Vietnam War. This quote would be an appropriate epigraph because the author has taken cares to highlight that the exact events and facts of the war aren’t as important as the people who took part in it and trying to understand their experiences and
The war was physically damaging to them because the soldiers would end up getting shot or blown up by grenades which would result in losing a body part or if it ends up being really bad, the soldier would pass away (Chapter 13). It was also damaging emotionally because soldiers would sometimes see their friends die right in front of them because they risked their life in order to save others. Furthermore, death was not the only action that was damaging physically and emotionally but also the fact that they could not keep a steady girlfriend because they did not have time for relationships but only had time for one night stands. For example, O’Brien only had a few more days left in Vietnam and during that time, he thought about a girl (Chapter 9). He said so himself that finding a girl was hopeless but he had continued to visualize one in order to keep himself sane (Chapter 9). Visualizing a girl’s face and imagining a relationship messed with the soldier’s mental health. Another example of the war being mentally damaging to the soldiers is the fact that they would not know when the enemy would attack. It is the stress of not knowing when or if they end up getting mortared or getting ambushed in the middle of the night that would also mess with their mental
Tim O’Brien is drafted one month after graduating from Macalester College to fight a war he hated. Tim O’Brien believed he was above the war, and as a result pursued the alternative of escaping across the border to Canada. This understandable act is what Tim O’Brien considers an embarrassment to himself, and to others. When Tim O’Brien finds accommodation on the border to Canada, he meets Elroy Berdahl who eventually influences Tim O’Brien, to change. Elroy Berdahl acts as a mentor to Tim, a figure that remains detached in the sense that he must provide enough support and understanding without being attached to the results.
Throughout the chapter O’Brien uses a technique known as point of view. The point of views in the novel comes from three characters- Azar, Kiowa, and Tim O’Brien himself. The three characters perspectives on war are interpreted entirely different. Tim O’Brien is illustrated as the most sensitive solider out of the three. “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole…” (124). Tim’s sensitivity is revealed when he shows how bewildered he is as he stares at the lifeless Viet Cong body. Tim allows the readers to see that he has remorse about how he took action to stop the Viet Cong solider as he thinks repetitively about the repugnant attack. Tim is also shown as the character that never really talks and is very quite which in turn shows that he is guilty and ashamed. Azar happens to be the solider that is there to complete his job and does not show any sorrow for any actions that may occur. “Oh, man, you fuckin’ trashed the fucker” (125). In the novel, Azar shows that he actually enjoys the work of war and it does not really seem to bother him. Kiowa is more sensible in realizing and understanding what Tim is experiencing. “Tim it’s a war. The guy wasn’t Heidi—he had a weapon, right? It’s a tough thing, for sure but you got to cut out that staring” (126). He knows that what Tim is feeling is really hard for him to grasp because of the astonishment “Take it slow. Just go wherever the spirit takes you.” (126). It is shown that Kiowa has an understanding of Tim but he knows how to deal with the situation at hand.
Moreover, the stories continue about Alpha company, which is the company of men being written about in the book. O’Brien talks about the friends he made such as “Rat”, whom he shared many memories with, (O’Brien, 64). He also talks about the differences in death, while it was tragic when someone in the company died, it was a different experience when it was a close friend. For instance, when Kiowa dies, it’s a tragedy for the entire company and many sat around and reminisce about the times they shared, (O’Brien, 163). Therefore, because this story of the Vietnam was it told like a novel, it has a very lifelike feeling to it. When Kiowa died it makes the reader feel the sadness that was in the air, almost as if the reader was present in Vietnam. As I stated earlier, it truly gives people who may not fully understand the tragedy that was
In the last chapter of The Things They Carried, all the stories interlock into a jigsaw puzzle that creates a great message. Each theme is highlighted by each of the major stories that are being retold. The sun in which everything revolves around is the presence of O'Brien and his own experiences; writing about himself alternating between the first and third person narrative voices.
War is a peculiar thing; it torments soldiers physically but even more so mentally. When people think of war, they think of the battles and the physical aspects. What they do not realize is that there is a whole other side to war. People do not realize what a war can do to a person. Some soldiers become so accustomed to the war life that they cannot adjust back into life at home. Even if the soldiers are able to adjust, their memories about the war still haunt them. In his short stories, O'Brien writes about the experiences of soldiers in the Vietnam War. In "The Ghost Soldiers," "Night Life," and "The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien writes about the Vietnam War to show that the soldiers fought a mental war, not a physical battle.