Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

he Things They Carried is a nonfiction book written by Tim O’Brien. It was first published in 1990 and became critically acclaimed shortly after its release. The book itself is a novel comprised of short war stories from the Vietnam conflict. It reflects mainly on the individual aspects of soldiers like the impact of casualties, internal conflict, visitors, and the lives of soldiers after the war, rather than a liberal summary of the Vietnam War. This results in exceptional looks at perspective and character development throughout the story, something that is difficult to achieve when given such a broad topic such as a war.

Throughout the book, O’Brien reflected on many personal interpretations of the war, some being physical, spiritual, and

even philosophical. These are best embodied by two significant characters, the jittery and unfortunate Ted Lavender, and the young and observant Rat Kiley, who both go through traumatic events to move both the plot and surrounding characters forward. Each of these young men suffer from the fine details enforced by the Vietnam conflict. The details of loss, not only moral but physical, the details enforced by the culture around them, and just the details of meaninglessness, if their losses and gains truly meant anything to the greater cause.
In the beginning story of The things they carried (Ironically named “The things they carried”) a group of soldiers patrol through the jungle.

With each of the objects they carried being listed along with its exact weight and meaning to the soldier. One of these patrolling soldiers was the paranoid soul Ted Lavender, who kept an ever abundant supply of tranquilizers and marijuana on him at all times to control his “Anxiety”. Unfortunately though, while taking a whiz Mr. Lavender was shot and killed. Something far from the stereotypical death thought of in war time. Later on their commanding officer blames his personal obsession with a girl in the U.S.A. caused him to lose focus, and eventually cause the demise of Lavender. Simply an example of how one war can strip people of things they held sacred before and replace it with life and death

responsibility.
Following the influence of Lavender is the occurring moment of Rat Kiley who witnessed a situation much like Lavender, except as the observer. In this experience Rat and a fellow soldier (Tod Lemon) play a game of catch with a smoke grenade, something that would seem vile but acted as a simple pass time for the soldiers. During the game, Todd stepped back and set off a mine, resulting in his demise. This of course crushed Rat, not only mentally but spiritually. In an effort to to express his friendship and “brotherhood” with Lemon, He writes a heartfelt letter to his sister. A letter that expressed his admiration for the times they spent in Vietnam, though his sister never writes back. This of course upsets Kiley, who isn’t exactly heart broken, but he has more or less lost his faith in the society back home. A group of people who don’t truly understand the meaning of brotherhood, until they've been truly objected to adversity.
The book reflects on several key stories in it’s context, just not always based around a personal experience.

Many of the stories are based around the mentality of war. How in society's perception, war is a chance for men to be brave a make themselves into the most noble of heroes, where in reality men are simply thrown into a situation where their main priority is to save themselves. Like in this “Situation”, a man sees a grenade thrown near his platoon, so the brave soldier in an act of sacrifice jumps on it. This of course would absorb the explosion saving his comrades, wrong. The grenade was an anti vehicular charge that not only kills the man, but kills all the men in front, behind and to the side. That's war, it’s not brave, it’s not beautiful, it's just a world of shit. A world where boys are grabbed and told to fight, to protect their country in a jungle an ocean away. War’s

war.
This book was written in the early 90s, a significant time after the cease fire. I assume after that 10 year span most of the opposition to the war would have faded. I assume it was written after this portion of time to simply see how the war had settled. Not politically, but psychologically. The war bared it’s way into soldiers minds, family's minds, protester’s minds, and of course the mind of history. This book is meant to show the mental experience of the men who were their, something that isn’t focused on in basic accounts. The book was written so this mentality will be saved for history.