In Tim O’Brien’s book, “The Things They Carried”, Mitchell Sanders is one of the most likeable soldiers throughout the book. He is kind and dedicated, and because of his good qualities, he is developed as a father figure. Sanders plays many important roles, and this is just one of the many reasons the author introduced him in the story.
Sanders is intelligent. He is the RTO, otherwise known as the Radio Telephone Operator, so communication is important to him. He has years of soldierly experience, and incorporates that knowledge into stories that he shares with the men. In the book, when lieutenant Jimmy Cross leads the men into a field of feces, Kiowa meets his death when the field explodes with mortars. Later on, Sanders blames Cross for his failure of being a leader. Sanders is not afraid of putting himself up higher than lieutenant Jimmy Cross, he is a confident man, and will step in to finish a job when he needs to.
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When we are first introduced to Mitchell Sanders, we are told that he carries condoms, the PRC-25 radio (weighing 26 pounds), brass knuckles, starched tiger fatigues, and other miscellaneous items.
We quickly learn that the author developed Sanders as a storyteller, he gives the men in the platoon advice and lessons based on stories from his own experiences. During the book, Rat Kiley tells a long story about his first mission in the mountains of Vietnam and adds details to make it sound true. Sanders scolds Kiley for his unnecessary opinions that he added to the story, and explains to him that a true war story has meaning, it has morals. Sanders is disappointed, he tells the men that storytelling is an art, it needs to flow, and it needs to have rhythm. Sanders is stubbornly obsessive when it comes to knowing and understanding the moral of a story. He believes that understanding the moral of a story or incident is the best way to learn from
it. The author, Tim O’Brien introduced and developed Mitchell Sanders in a unique and interesting way. In the beginning, he didn’t seem to have much impact on the book, but by the end of the story his true role is revealed. He is a lighthearted and funny man, and uses his techniques of storytelling to keep the men on track, and help them learn from their mistakes. He is not afraid to put the men in line, and teach them a lesson. This is where his role as a father figure plays out. Overall, Sanders had a big impact on the story. Without him, the men wouldn’t understand the lesson to be learned from all of the events and stories told throughout the book.
‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’Brien provides a insider’s view of war and its distractions, both externally in dealing with combat and internally dealing with the reality of war and its effect on each solder. The story, while set in Vietnam, is as relevant today with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as it was in the 1960’s and 1970’s in Southeast Asia. With over one million soldiers having completed anywhere from one to three tours in combat in the last 10 years, the real conflict might just be inside the soldier. O’Brien reflects this in his writing technique, using a blend of fiction and autobiographical facts to present a series of short narratives about a small unit of soldiers. While a war story, it is also an unrequited love story too, opening with Jimmy Cross holding letters from a girl he hoped would fall in love with him. (O’Brien 1990).
Additionally, O’Brien returns to the theme of the influence of others when describing Cross’s experiences. O’Brien touches upon the ideal by utilizing Jimmy Cross as a prime example. According to the passage, Cross was never destined to be a commanding officer in the U.S. military. Cross essentially joined the commanding officer program as a result of his friends peer pressuring him to enroll and for a few credits without acknowledging the repercussions of his actions in pursuing the war. Jimmy Cross now resents his ill decision as he endures Hell in Vietnam, especially after taking responsibility over Kiowa’s death. This ideal is significant and prominent as it reflects the basis and justification for many soldiers who enlisted in the army, which is due to the influence of others. This is a recurring ideal, which is evident in “On the Rainy River” where O’Brien is ultimately persuaded into pursuing the war as a result of a mirage portraying his loved ones cheering him to enlist in the war.
One of the most overlooked aspects in the life of a soldier is the weight of the things they carry. In Tim O'Brien's story, "The Things They Carried," O'Brien details the plight of Vietnam soldiers along with how they shoulder the numerous burdens placed upon them. Literally, the heavy supplies weigh down each soldier -- but the physical load imposed on each soldier symbolizes the psychological baggage a soldier carries during war. Though O'Brien lists the things each soldier carries, the focal point centers around the leader, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, and his roles in the war. Lt. Cross has multiple burdens, but his emotional baggage is the most pressing. Of all the weights burdened upon Lt. Cross, the heaviest baggage is located in his own mind. Specifically, the heaviest things Lt. Cross carries are an emotional obsession over Martha's love, the physical consequences caused by his daydreaming of Martha, and an unrelenting guilt about Ted Lavender's death.
In The Things They Carried, an engaging novel of war, author Tim O’Brien shares the unique warfare experience of the Alpha Company, an assembly of American military men that set off to fight for their country in the gruesome Vietnam War. Within the novel, the author O’Brien uses the character Tim O’Brien to narrate and remark on his own experience as well as the experiences of his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company. Throughout the story, O’Brien gives the reader a raw perspective of the Alpha Company’s military life in Vietnam. He sheds light on both the tangible and intangible things a soldier must bear as he trudges along the battlefield in hope for freedom from war and bloodshed. As the narrator, O’Brien displayed a broad imagination, retentive memory, and detailed descriptions of his past as well as present situations. 5. The author successfully uses rhetoric devices such as imagery, personification, and repetition of O’Brien to provoke deep thought and allow the reader to see and understand the burden of the war through the eyes of Tim O’Brien and his soldiers.
One of the main characters in the short story “The Things They Carried”, written by Tim O’Brien, is a twenty-four year old Lieutenant named Jimmy Cross. Jimmy is the assigned leader of his infantry unit in the Vietnam War, but does not assume his role accordingly. Instead, he’s constantly daydreaming, along with obsessing, over his letters and gifts from Martha. Martha is a student at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, Jimmy’s home state. He believes that he is in love with Martha, although she shows no signs of loving him. This obsession is a fantasy that he uses to escape from reality, as well as, take his mind off of the war that surrounds him, in Vietnam. The rest of the men in his squad have items that they carry too, as a way of connecting to their homes. The story depicts the soldiers by the baggage that they carry, both mentally and physically. After the death of one of his troops, Ted Lavender, Jimmy finally realizes that his actions have been detrimental to the squad as a whole. He believes that if he would have been a better leader, that Ted Lavender would have never been shot and killed. The physical and emotional baggage that Jimmy totes around with him, in Vietnam, is holding him back from fulfilling his responsibilities as the First Lieutenant of his platoon. Jimmy has apparent character traits that hold him back from being the leader that he needs to be, such as inexperience and his lack of focus; but develops the most important character trait in the end, responsibility.
Since Jimmy Cross was the oldest he was an evident leader and assumed responsibility. Since Jimmy Cross took upon the leadership role, his memories with the war will be carried forever. For example, when Cross encounters another split-making decision regarding his soldier’s lives; he is given a warning to not make the same repeat mistake he did with Lavender and attempt to not get distracted with the concept of love but war is unpredictable and so are the burdens and consequences. Cross’ has the ability to choose the next campsite; he has told to put the camp in the field despite being warned it was a trap by the locals who lived there. This was a foreshadow to imminent death that happens later in the novel. The campsite was a trap and Kiowa, Alpha Company’s soldier, was exploded by rounds of mortar and died. This made Cross responsible for a part of a soldier’s death. This is a big part of the theme of emotional burdens such as guilt that carries with Jimmy Cross. "When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war… A moment of carelessness or bad judgment or plain stupidity carried consequences that lasted forever." (115) shows us the struggles and emotional burdens that must have carried afterward with Cross and his platoon, all this from the result of plain carelessness despite trying not to focus on Martha and overcoming his obstacles. Other soldier’s such as Mitchell Sanders cannot make sense of their fellow soldier’s death and his only way to feel that Kiowa’s death was not meaningless and sad was to blame someone. "Ten billion places we could've set up last night, the man picks a latrine." (28) This is exactly what Mitchell Sander’s did towards Jimmy Cross, putting all the blame on him. This not only affecting Sander’s emotionally but also Cross’ which puts them with more burdens than ever before.
In the short story, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, each soldier carries many items during times of war and strife, but each necessity differs. This short story depicts what each soldier carries mentally, physically, and emotionally on his shoulders as long, fatiguing weeks wain on during the Vietnam War. Author Tim O’Brien is a Vietnam War veteran, an author, the narrator, and a teacher. The main character, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, is a Vietnam War soldier who is away at war fighting a mind battle about a woman he left behind in New Jersey because he is sick with love while trying to fulfill his duties as a soldier to keep America free. Tim O’Brien depicts in “The Things They Carried” a troubled man who also shoulders the burden of guilt when he loses one of his men to an ambush.
Several stories into the novel, in the section, “How to tell a true war story”, O’Brien begins to warn readers of the lies and exaggerations that may occur when veterans tell war stories.
A true war story blurs the line between fact and fiction, where it is neither true nor false at the same time. What is true and what is not depends on how much you believe it to be. In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story” from the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the author provides various definitions to how the validity of a war story can be judged. The entire chapter is a collection of definitions that describe the various truths to what a true war story is. Unlike O’Brien, who is a novelist and storyteller, David Finkel, the author of “The Good Soldiers”, is a journalist whose job is to report the facts. Yet in the selection that we read, chapter nine, Finkel uses the convention of storytelling, which relies heavily on the stories the combat troops tell each other or him personally. Finkel attempts to give an unbiased view of the Iraq war through the stories of the soldiers but in doing so, Finkel forfeits the use of his own experiences and his own opinions. From O’Brien’s views on what a true war story is combined with my own definitions, I believe that Finkel provides a certain truth to his war stories but not the entire truth.
Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is not a novel about the Vietnam War. “It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought about from the war” (King 182). O'Brien makes several statements about war through these dynamic characters. He shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressures of war, he makes an effective antiwar statement, and he comments on the reversal of a social deviation into the norm. By skillfully employing the stylistic technique of specific, conscious detail selection and utilizing connotative diction, O'Brien thoroughly and convincingly makes each point.
The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers who fought there was huge. The experience forever changed how they would think and act for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for this was there was little to no understanding by the soldiers as to why they were fighting this war. They felt they were killing innocent people, farmers, poor hard working people, women, and children were among their victims. Many of the returning soldiers could not fall back in to their old life styles. First they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms. Second they were haunted by the atrocities of war. Some soldiers could not go back to the mental state of peacetime. Then there were soldiers Tim O’Brien meant while in the war that he wrote the book “The Things They Carried,” that showed how important the role of story telling was to soldiers. The role of stories was important because it gave them an outlet and that outlet was needed both inside and outside the war in order to keep their metal state in check.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried has readers and critics alike scratching their heads with wonder about the meaning of “story-truth” and “happening-truth.” Although, he served in the Vietnam War from 1968 until 1970, he fabricates the events of the war throughout The Things They Carried. At the same time, he insists that the truth lies at the heart of the emotion in the story, an idea that many readers question. Furthermore, it is pointless for the reader to attempt to sort through the stories and differentiate between the “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” because it is nearly impossible. This tactic is one of O’Brien’s more ingenious writing methods. He does not want the reader to know the difference between the two because in his opinion that fact is irrelevant. O’Brien obviously thinks outside the box and has everyone questioning reality. However, this fact is truly ironic, because the point is not to care what type of “truth” it is, but to instead feel the raw beauty of the emotion and to accept it as the truth. While trying to define “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” a couple chapters in particular focus on the idea of truth, “How to Tell a True War Story,” “The Man I Killed” and “Good Form.” O’Brien believes that the most important thing for a reader is to experience the emotion of the story, be it “story-truth” or “happening-truth,” as long as the real emotion is conveyed and understood by the reader, then it is as true as it could possibly be.
In his assessment of storytelling, O’Brien highlights the challenges of telling stories by including many tales that take place after the Vietnam War. For example, back in America, the soldier’s of Vietnam found
The American Civil War was all a blur for many american soldiers. Shots were fired, lives were lost, and battles were won. The only ground that John Dunbar had was the Sioux tribe. They lived to protect, sacrifice, and fight for what they had. But little did Dunbar know what he was getting into. It was all guns and whistles from there on.
Case 2: people in crisis need to find alternative truths, either in a friend or in literature.