“The Things They Carried” was written by Tim O’Brien in 1990. It is about the physical, psychological, and emotional burdens that the soldiers carried during the Vietnam War. During times of stress, people carry more than just physical burdens. The things they carried were mostly necessities. “Pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum” (O’Brien 367). O’Brien portrays that everyone carries a burden of emotions in life and exceeding emotions can have negative effects. The central characters in this story are: Tim O’Brien, narrator and protagonist; First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the platoon leader who obsesses over a girl back home named “Martha;” and Ted Lavender, gets killed and Cross believes that it is his fault. He feels that way because Lavender was shot in the head while Cross was fantasizing over Martha. “He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence, Lavender was now dead, and this was …show more content…
It is from the point of view of Tim O’Brien. Tim O'Brien served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970. O’Brien uses his memories and experience from the War and writes them into this story. “Even in his first piece of published work, however, O’Brien appears not as a soldier but as a writer who has been in the combat zone, a survivor of the minefields of Quang Ngai. Since we are made aware of the act of writing as well as the facts of this soldier’s transit through the Vietnam War, Combat Zone looks forward to the more self-advertising metafictionality of O’Brien’s later work” (Heberle 43). The first book that O’Brien wrote was titled “If I Die In A Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home.” The book has many of his personal stories from the War. “We tiptoed into the little hamlet, nudging over jugs of rice, watching where we walked, alert to booby traps, brains foggy, numb, hoping to find nothing” (If I Die, O’Brien
One of the first women introduced to the reader is Martha. Martha is Lt. Jimmy Cross's love interest, even though she has only ever considered him as a friend and nothing more. O'Brien's uses the story of him and his misguidedness to show how the soldiers were completely separated from the war. After the war is over, the soldiers returned home attempting to get back to their normal lives. But as was shown with Cross and Martha, it didn’t turn out that way. Trying to cope with all the death that he found in Vietnam, Cross does not believe that Martha isn't a virgin and believes that they still could have a life together. This was meant to be a comfort and safety mechanism when he was possibly faced with rejection and death all around him. It got to the point that it was all he thought about up to Ted lavenders death. Trying to rid himself of the guilt he “burned Martha’s letters. The he burned the two photographs… He realized it was only a gesture… you couldn’t burn away the blame” (O’Brien 23) This shows that he knew that his obsessions with Martha is what lead to the death of ted Lavender, and even when he reali...
I wonder what it was like to witness the Vietnam War firsthand in combat. Well, in the short story, “The Things they Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, the theme was portrayed as the physical and emotional burdens that soldiers had to deal with during the Vietnam War.
O’Brien wrote The Things They Carried layering themes on top of themes, but what makes it amazing is the way he presents these themes. Every single one intertwined with another. Burdens. Truth. Death. The soldiers carried their burdens and the death of their friends and enemies, and they live on as storytellers telling their war stories, but can there really be a true war story?
Tim O’Brien is doing the best he can to stay true to the story for his fellow soldiers. Tim O’Brien believed that by writing the story of soldiers in war as he saw it brings some type of justice to soldiers in a war situation.
The reason why O’Brien narrates stories, is to release his memories from a guilty conscious, and continuously keeping alive the stories of soldiers who were forgotten through the years. Many young men were sent to war, regardless if they did
All humans experience the different weights of life, whether in the form of a heavy bag or a past memory. O’Brien begins The Things They Carried opens with a detailed description of each object a soldier in the Vietnam War carries on their back. These men carry their own weight of their heavy bags, intricate guns, medical supplies, among other items. In addition to the physical weight each soldier carries, the psychological weight of their experiences are also outlined. A typical soldier carries his uplifting hopes, crushing realities, or horrific experiences in the war, accumulating and changing these mental packages continuously. As the first chapter of The Things They Carried, the concept of the mental weight of the war is central to the overall theme of the novel. While it may be more comfortable to put down your mental bag and rest, the sheer horror of the war keeps each soldier with a heavy pack for the rest of their lives, only being able to relieve tension by
Tim O’Brien gained and lost many things in Vietnam. One of the things he lost was the chance to graduate from Harvard. This could have made for a potentially very successful promising career but at the young age of twenty-one he was drafted to be sent out to the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien did not like the idea of going to war, however he refused the idea of fleeing to Canada and decided to stay and serve his duty of fighting for his country. When he arrived in Vietnam he got the short end of the stick and ended up fighting on the front lines of the war. During his time there he observed that a majority of the men would do things like carry items or little possessions that made it easier to get by or reminded them of
She was a girl from home which he held pictures of. He was truly in love with her but she did not feel the same in return. One day, as the men were humping through Than Khe, a gunshot rang through the air and Ted Lavender dropped dead. Throughout the walk, Lieutenant Cross had been thinking about Martha rather than his current situation. “He pictured Martha’s smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men, and now Ted Lavender was dead because [of it]...” (page 7). His obsessive love had led to the murder of a friend, and, the guilt of that event was added to the burdens that he carried throughout the rest of the war. Later on, he could no longer stand the feeling and he burned Martha’s
Lieutenant Cross is a character who, until the death of a soldier, has been very loose and not taken the war seriously. He had let his soldiers throw away their supplies, take drugs, and sing happy songs in the middle of the serious war. He was only concerned with Martha; he dreamt about being with her, and he was delighted when he received letters from her. Tim O’Brien says, “Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.” (p. 2) This shows how all he cared about was Martha; he was not paying attention to his real life and his surroundings. He was basically living in a world of fantasy because they lived in two separate worlds. Being unable to wake up from this dream made him potentially weak because his mind was always wandering elsewhere, never in the current situation. This made him an easy target for his enemies because if this had gone on, then he would start to fear death, fear fighting, and fear the war. He would become a coward because he would wish for the day when he could be with Martha again after the war. This would greatly weaken him and his army both, and they would most likely lose to the enemy.
.... Jimmy was leader and should have been patrolling to make sure the platoon was safe. Instead he was dreaming about Martha and Lavender was shot and killed. Now Cross had a new motivation, he would forget about Martha and be a better leader. He didn’t want any more men to die because of his careless day dreaming. The other men had the motivation of fear to keep them working and in good health. The only thing they would all dream about would be the plane that would take them away from Vietnam.
In the first paragraph of the story, Jimmy Cross' rank is noted (First Lieutenant) along with the fact that he "carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey" (434). From the outset, the reader sees that Martha plays a pivotal role in his thoughts and actions. The fact that Jimmy Cross "would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire" after he marched the entire day and dug a foxhole indicates that he thinks often of Martha (434). While these thoughts of a lover back home provide some form of escape for Lt. Cross, they also burden him with the obsessive feelings of unrequited love. ...
He states that as a soldier, there is so much to soak in from war scenes that it all becomes a muddled mess. Therefore, the story of the moment can be different from each soldier’s perspective due to the parts where each man puts in his own ideas. This leads to some speculation as to whether or not O’Brien’s stories are true or false.
Tim O'Brien is confused about the Vietnam War. He is getting drafted into it, but is also protesting it. He gets to boot camp and finds it very difficult to know that he is going off to a country far away from home and fighting a war that he didn't believe was morally right. Before O'Brien gets to Vietnam he visits a military Chaplin about his problem with the war. "O'Brien I am really surprised to hear this. You're a good kid but you are betraying you country when you say these things"(60). This says a lot about O'Brien's views on the Vietnam War. In the reading of the book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien explains his struggles in boot camp and when he is a foot soldier in Vietnam.
O’Brien employs the use of a third person narrator which allows the reader to sympathize with the soldiers and the hardships of war they faced. Through the author’s narrator, the reader is able to understand Cross’ guilt surrounding the death of Ted Lavender, and also Cross’ choice to destroy all reminders of Martha. The author’s application of point of view recognizes O’Brien’s suggested theme, as it shows Cross’ decision to remove distractions applies to the entire platoon; for Cross understands the effects of allowing emotional baggage to distract you from your duties as expressed in the story, “This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity” (O’Brien
O’Brien’s unique verisimilitude writing style fills the novel with deep meaning and emotion. Analyzing the novel through a psychological lens only adds to its allure. Understanding why characters act the way they do helps bring this novel to life. The reader begins to empathize with the characters. Every day, the soldiers’ lives hang in the balance. How these soldiers react to life-threatening situations will inspire the reader. Life has an expiration date. Reading about people who are held captive by their minds and who die in the name of war, will inspire the reader to live everyday as if they are currently in the