Everyday we pass people, some people walk with nothing in their hands, while other people seem to carry the whole world on their shoulders. You can’t always tell when someone is carrying something, but most of the time you can see in their face how much weight they bear. The novel The Things They Carry by Tim O’Brien, is all about weight it’s infinite forms, from the weight of a gun with the sole purpose of killing, to the guilt felt by men taking lives, it’s all about carrying the weight. In this novel you gain a new perception of war, and the soldiers who fight in the wars. Modern war stories describe war as a place where you go to become a hero, soldiers fight, soldiers are brave and full of pride, they don’t back down from anything. In …show more content…
this story you get the real side, these soldiers are 19-25 years old, most were drafted, but all are scared. O’Brien gives you a real sense of war, the confusion, the fear, the complication, the fun, the adventure, the adrenaline, real war feelings. The stories jump back and forth from the war, to before the war, to after the war, this gives you the feeling that O’Brien, even after all of these years, still hasn’t pieced everything together in his head the right way. A real war story isn’t supposed to be pretty, and chronological, a real war story is gruesome, and chaotic, just like a real war. Throughout the novel, Tim O’Brien goes into great depths describing the weights of everything the men carry, he doesn’t skip a single bullet or a single keepsake.
O’Brien always counters the weight of a physical object with that of an emotion the soldier is feeling. These aren’t soldiers, they are kids in uniforms, they are all so young, yet they carry enough firepower to destroy someone’s world. “They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.” (7) Armed to the teeth with weaponry they are required to carry, along with everything from home that keeps them safe the soldiers carry more than they can bear, because they need everything to survive. Along with the weight of the weapons and trinkets, they carry the knowledge of what their weapons can do as well as the knowledge of how exactly to use them. A certain anxiety rushes over you when you know you may very well have to kill, and kill …show more content…
soon. As the stories go on you begin to realize that all of the trauma, all of the fear and confusion still has a hold on O’Brien’s head, he can’t seem to get past this enough in his life to understand it. With any trauma, the events begin to play over and over and over in your head, some truth gets taken away, and some fallacies begin to take their place, you seem to get a twisted idea what actually happened and what you felt happened. War is hell, war is traumatic, and these young kids living through such a gruesome war like the Vietnam more than just scars them for life. When looking back on the story they lived, it seems as if they can’t decipher the truth. “In a war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.” (67) O’Brien can’t figure out what really happened, he went through a real war, and he is trying to tell it as truthfully as he can, but he can’t seem to get passed the chaos. He lived through it, but it was so intense and so confusing the more it plays through his head, the more the truth starts to slip. Losing pieces of the story isn’t always such a bad thing, O’Brien effectively adds what he feels necessary, where he thinks it goes, and if it doesn’t fit it only adds to the chaotic feeling of the story. He wrote this story so perfectly filled with madness that you understand his pain, even if he made some parts up, it is still true to the story. “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.” O’Brien can’t remember every detail of the war, especially not enough to put into this story, a lot is definitely left out, but what he says and what he learned from the war he has put into this novel, and that is the truest thing there is. O’Brien was drafted into a war he didn’t want to go to, a war he had no idea the purpose behind, a war a kid should not have to fight. Imagine being 19, fresh out of high school and trying to figure out what to do with your life, when one day you get a letter saying you were drafted into the most horrific war there ever was. Being torn away from family, friends, and security for a reason no one quite understands. “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons.” There were people dying in this war every day, they didn’t have enough soldiers to keep up with the deaths. Thousands of young Americans died, but no one knew exactly what the cause for the war was, people were certainly shedding blood for this cause, but people were uncertain of what this cause was. Perhaps what stands out the most from everything are the little things, most people go by believing that the big events are the most meaningful, they think those are the moments that will stick with them forever, and yes this is true, most big moments never go away, however the most important parts are the little things. The things that you will come to miss the most are the little pieces that seemed so small, but made the biggest impact. For example when someone is killed in front of you in battle, that is a huge event you will never forget, but what you will remember more than anything are those small things that person would do that defined them, the relationship between you and that person, the way you would talk and laugh, that is what is most important, and those are the pieces that never leave. “What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end..” O’Brien doesn’t remember all of the big events, and he has probably forgotten more about it than he remembers, but he has written this story through all of these fragments. The fragments that make up his nightmares, the fragments that won’t leave his head, the fragments that start out of nowhere, then end abruptly because he’s forgotten. This entire novel is written in fragments, this kind of order plays perfectly into the theme of the story. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a true war story.
It follows no order, it’s chaotic, it’s confusing, but it does a very very good job at describing war, and O’Brien after the war. This story has no beginning, and no end, just like his thoughts. This story starts from the middle, goes to the beginning, then ends, but the point of the story is that you see real war, the chaos, the blood, the inhumanity of the entire thing. You see a side to war that you have never seen before, you see the raw emotion of a kid who has to kill for a cause he doesn’t understand, but more than anything you gain an understanding of soldiers and what they go through. War is chaos, war is
hell.
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.
There is a major change in the men in this novel. At first, they are excited to join the army in order to help their country. After they see the truth about war, they learn very important assets of life such as death, destruction, and suffering. These emotions are learned in places like training camp, battles, and hospitals. All the men, dead or alive, obtained knowledge on how to deal with death, which is very important to one’s life.
The title of this novel, “The Wars” is illusory. Upon first glance, it makes one expect a protagonist who goes to an actual war, uses physical strength to fight on the battlefield and becomes a war hero.While part of that is true, there are also other significances of the war associated with this title. This novel recounts the journey of the protagonist, Robert Ross as he starts out as a shy, introvert and an inexperienced person before he goes to war; he experiences a change in himself as a result of the people and the battle(s) that he fights with the factors in his surroundings. Therefore, “The Wars” doesn’t necessarily mean the war with the enemy but it includes the wars at home, wars against nature and wars of relationships. Which
O Brien 's point of view is an accurate one as he himself because he is a Vietnam veteran. The title of the short story is meaningful because it describes each soldier’s personality and how he handles conflict within the mind and outside of the body during times of strife. The title fits the life as a soldier perfectly because it shows the reality that war is more than just strategy and attacking of forces. O’Brien narrates the story from two points of view: as the author and the view of the characters. His style keeps the reader informed on both the background of things and the story itself at the same
Throughout the story, the author goes into great detail about the heavy physical loads that the soldiers had to carry with them. Even the way O’Brien describes the many loads seems to grab your attention on the extreme conditions these men had to go through just to survive another day. The most interesting thing I found while reading this story is that even though the soldiers carried a ton of weight around with them, they insisted on carrying as much as possible to insist they were prepared for any given situation. Also, just as we are all different individuals, each soldier carried their own personal things that depended on their own habits and hobbies. Some examples of the necessities the soldiers had to carry with them include, “Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pockets knives, heat tabs, wrist-watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C-rations, and two or three canteens of water (O’Brien 125). These were just some of the things these men had to carry with them just to undergo some of the conditions surrounding them. Besides those items I explained things like weapons and magazines made up most of the majority of the weight. What really shocked me at this point is that with all this weight the soldiers had to carry with them, they were expected to be very mobile and able to haul around everything for miles at a time. The only benefit I could possible see coming out of all the things they carried is the protection the backpack gave the soldiers from the spraying of bullets during battle. Other than that, the more the men carried, the more their moral went down under those conditions. I think that the author brilliantly described this story. It was almost like I felt my backpack getting heavier as I was reading on and the items kept increasing. Towards the end of the story I kind of felt just as the soldiers did, weighed down and dead tired.
Used throughout the story, the word weight is the most paramount word in the story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O'Brien. It shows the emotional, physical, and revisionary impacts that the Vietnam War had on adolescent men, and how they have to carry the physical and poignant weight for and towards the war. This word emphasizes the burden men carry and how the war’s weight is a catalyst for a man to change.. Each man had the burden of bearing a disparate amount of weight during the war. It is the weight of war that impinges on a man.
War always seems to have no end. A war between countries can cross the world, whether it is considered a world war or not. No one can be saved from the reaches of a violent war, not even those locked in a safe haven. War looms over all who recognize it. For some, knowing the war will be their future provides a reason for living, but for others the war represents the snatching of their lives without their consent. Every reaction to war in A Separate Peace is different, as in life. In the novel, about boys coming of age during World War II, John Knowles uses character development, negative diction, and setting to argue that war forever changes the way we see the world and forces us to mature rapidly.
O'Brien's repeated use of the phrase "they carried" attempts to create a realization in the reader that soldiers in wars always carry some kind of weight; there is always some type of burden that servicemen and women will forever hold onto both throughout the war and long after it has finished. The specification of what the soldier bear shows that the heaviness is both physical and emotional and in most cases the concrete objects carried manifest into the continued emotional distress that lasts a lifetime (sentence about what they carry from novel) "The Things They Carried" emphasis this certain phrase in order for those that do not have the experience of going to understand the constant pressure of burdens they are under. O'Brien draws on
...otional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight" (“Carried” 23). O’Brien showed the effect that emotional longings have on one’s thoughts & feelings. Though he tells that his novel is about story-truth, which is not about war and do not have a moral; but one can understand that O’Brien’s fiction is a message against forcing young people into war. By true-made up stories; the author shows the transformation of one’s emotional state through war and its long-lasting impact. O’Brien’s stories prove that seen physical burdens emphasize the unseen emotional burden: physical burden can be expressed in words, but emotional burden, changes that are encouraged by our surroundings cannot be expressed in words- thus they always remain untrue yet true.
Yet, the weight of these intangible “items” such as “grief, terror, love, longing” overshadow the physical load they must endure since they are not easily cast away. Tim O’ Brien alternates between narrative and descriptions of the tangible items that soldiers carry. He remembers seemingly everything that his squad mates were carrying and provides an “emotionless recitation” of the weights of each of the items the soldiers carried into the field. He frequently uses the term “humping” to describe how the soldiers carry their gear, making them appear more uncivilized, like animals. As he switches back to mentioning the intangible items, such as the experiences of his leader Jimmy Cross and his love Martha, the emotional weights of each soldier is felt by the reader.
The short story, “The Things They Carried” was written by author Tim O'Brien in an unusual pattern. It contains a non-linear narrative of a short period in the life of a military unit active in Vietnam during the late 1960's, punctuated by an astonishingly vast inventory of items carried by each of the soldiers. The piece begins by introducing narrative and inventory items in somewhat separated sections, but as the story evolves the two categories become more and more mixed together, until it becomes apparent that who they are and what they are carrying are one and the same. It also becomes apparent that, in order for the unit's members to do the job they were sent to Vietnam to do, they need to streamline what they carry – only take what is needed to survive, dispose of the rest. This applies in a physical sense, where added weight can make them less physically effective, and also in an emotional/metaphysical sense, where the heavy psychic burden of trying to survive the day-to-day life of a warrior leaves no space for “extras”. In O'Brien's tale, there is an underlying question in all that he presents – what is a necessity, and what needs to be disposed of?
In the literal sense O’Brien talks about what different members of a platoon in Vietnam carried. This helps him to move to a more symbolic sense at the end of the story. He starts by talking about necessities and slowly moves on to what they carried to remind them that there was a world out side of the war. “Among the necessities or near necessities were p-38 can openers, pocket knifes, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water.” But as the story moves on it shows other things that were considered necessities to them even though to some one else they might seem a luxury. Such as Kiowa carrying his grandfather’s hatchet. These are obviously not necessities to others but were one for them. In the story the theme of weight kept coming up. Literally he meant the weight of each weapon, ration, and body armor, ECT… “it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weight 6.7 pounds…” Weight is used in this story to help show the symbolic meaning of weight later on in the story. “What they carried varied by mission.” Knowing the different dangers throughout the land also added to their burden, making them carry even more such as mosquito netting, machetes, mine detectors, and even things that didn’t have much use such as Kiowa carrying the New Testament and Dave Jensen carrying his night-sight vitamins. All of “The Things They Carried” helped to add to the stress of the war and also help to quell it, they carried what they needed.
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.
Steven Kaplan in his critical essay said that “O’Brien depicts all the “things” that appear in the first chapter in a precise, scientific style”. Meaning that O’Brien shares how much each thing the solider carries weighs either physically or psychologically. For example, “ On their feet they carried jungle boots-2.1-pounds and Dave Jenson carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl’s food powder as a precaution against trench foot”. (Page 114) Also in The Things They Carried, O’Brien mentions how much the artillery weighted right down to the ounce. For example, “ Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, a code book, binoculars, and a .45 caliber pistol that weighted 2.9 pounds fully loaded. The reason O’Brien puts the weights into the story is because he wants to show the hardship these soldiers went through and how they pushed through it. This proves the facts and memory interpretation because the things could really weigh that much, but on the other hand the soldiers can think they weight more than normal because of other factors like the heat. For instance, “ It was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighted 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. (Page 115)
This short story does not follow a traditional short story. All the nuances in this story make it a pretty unique piece. It follows a poetic structure at times, yet some passages are their own short story themselves. This follows a chaotic structure, and goes well with the setting (Vietnam War). O’Brien shows the chaos of War and integrates into every part of his