“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
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
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.
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...
.... 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.
What O’Brien sees as the purpose of the storytelling, and fictionalizing his experiences in Vietnam, can be seen through the “style” of his writing. It’s more than just a collection of stories. It’s a way for him to let go and start a new beginning. It is labeled “fiction” to make the story seem more engaging and to bring up the question, “Did this really happen?”
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 of 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 time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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