Burdens In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

In Tim O’brien’s short story, “The Things They Carried,” O’brien explains more than just what people face at war. O’Brien gives detail of each burden, struggle, and memory each soldier carries into the war. He describes of a battle more destructive than a war filled with guns, bombs, and knives. He describes of a mind battle, one in which is the hardest any man can face. A mind battle controls your every decision.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the reader receives insight as to what soldiers experienced during the Vietnam War and what thoughts consumed their minds in those times of hardship and heartache. As Americans, we typically picture military men and women as emotionally and physically strong, while in reality, that may not be the case. They deal with more emotional and physical trauma than we come to understand. People who carry physical or emotional burdens tend to seek some kind of release or do something to feel relieved of their burdens. O’Brien uses stories about the men in his platoon to depict how soldiers are bound by their own emotional weights, and each have a different way of trying to release themselves from those tensions.

Tim O’Brien writes us a wonderful fictional tale of a platoon of men in vietnam during the vietnam war, The Things They Carried shows the reader that when the men are over in this distant and strange land, not only do they carry physical objects, but emotional baggage and ideas that truly make, or break a man in war. Tim and his men show several signs of stress and turmoil while fighting the war, and while they survive they begin to understand what is really means to live, die, and what is right, and wrong. While over in vietnam the men are in a war, not a simple skirmish or fight, but a full on war against an enemy that they were not sure they are the enemy. The men would walk from location from location seeing what there is to do and trying

During times of war, soldiers would encounter death left and right, either if it were their friends or enemies. As a result, many people, including the characters in The Things They Carried, had been scared physically and emotionally due to the death of allies or enemies. Many people deal with their emotions in different ways, some in positive ways and some in negative ways. Characters such as Tim O’Brien, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, and Norman Bowker were haunted by the deaths of the people around them, and dealt with their grief by internalizing their feelings, getting rid of distractions, and talking to imaginary people. Tim O’Brien is haunted and is reminded by his past actions because he killed what he thought was an innocent young man.

“Only the dead have seen the end of war. ”-Plato . As we read through the book we relize that soldiers have too much emotional truam due to the trumatic experiences they have gone through. These trumatic experience has caused soldiers to carry emotinal burdens when they come back home to society. In the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien shares his experience as a soldier in the Vietnam war and shows how much the war causes someone to carry emotional burdens.

Death is an inevitable part of the life cycle. To bring those who are gone back to life, people must recreate their memories with the deceased through storytelling. In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien shows that when someone experiences a loss, by telling stories of the lost one it will keep them alive through the mind and help one cope with them being gone. In the first chapter, The Things They Carried, O’Brien demonstrates the theme of telling stories to cope with death by how the platoon members talk about Ted Lavender’s death, “Like cement, Kiowa whispered in the dark.

In The Things Things they carried by Tim O'brien, many soldiers are forced to deal with guilt for their entire lives. Many of these men were drafted into war and witnessed their fellow soldiers die for unnecessary reasons. As an example, Tim O’brien feels a great guilt for the man who he said he killed with a grenade and this is a major lifelong burden for him. This guilt is something that Tim is forced to carry for his life which relates back to the title, The Things They Carried. In Norman Bowker’s case, his guilt eventually lead him to hang himself not too long after the war.

The Things They Carried In the historical fiction The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien presents himself, the narrator, being faced with a war draft to a war he didn't agree with, in order to convey a message about going to war instead of fleeing the draft ultimately illustrating that message of being a coward for going against what he believed in. Tim O’Brien conveys a message of himself being a coward for going against what he believed in. In the text Tim had recently graduated from college when he got drafted to the war, O’Brien stated “In June of 1968, a month after graduating from Macalester College, I was drafted to fight a war I hated.” O’Brien makes it extremely clear that his views did not align with the war.

Teddy Roosevelt once said, “Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.” Throughout the whole novel of The Things They Carried, there are continuous examples of courage and what courage means to different soldiers. Tim O’Brien, the author of The Things They Carried, tells multiple war stories throughout the novel all with different morals. However, one thing that all of these war stories have in common is that each displays an example of great courage. One war story that we read about in the novel, is the story of Norman Bowker and Kiowa.

Throughout the story of The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, many different themes are expressed. The fear of shame is specifically shown throughout the story through the soldiers. These soldiers were constantly feeling the fear of shame and embarrassment if they were to flee from the war. They felt the fear of embarrassing not only themselves, but also their families and their communities if they were to flee from the war. No matter what is happening in the story of The Things They Carried, you will always be able to find the soldiers feeling the fear of embarrassment that the soldiers are carrying along with them through this tragic time.

There are many ways people cope with the loss of someone. Some people go through the 5 stages of grief and others try to embrace the sad loss of someone and see good come out of it. Tim O’Brien wrote “The Lives of The Dead” in order to preserve the memories of the dead by telling the stories of their lives. When O’Brien brings up specific people there is a story behind it because this is his way of coping with the loss of them. For example, throughout the whole story he was in Vietnam.

In The Things They Carried, O’Brien reveals his view on war through telling his readers how the Vietnam War had no point, was emotionally devastating, and displaying that there is no purpose in war unless the soldiers know what they are fighting for. O’Brien shows the pointlessness of war by

In the chapter “The Things They Carried” the author conveys the both literal and figurative things the characters are carrying with them. While the characters carry heavy physical loads, they also carry heavy emotional loads. These emotions they carry are love, grief, and innocence. Each man’s physical burden was never more than their emotional burden.

The concept of carrying is central to O'Brien's work, and it is manifested in various forms throughout the book. At its most basic level, carrying refers to the physical burden that the soldiers carry with them during the Vietnam War. They are laden with weapons, ammunition, rations, and other supplies that are necessary for their survival. These objects serve as a reminder of the constant danger and uncertainty of their situation, as well as the weight of their responsibility as soldiers.

The author was writing the story “The Things They Carried” expressed so many thoughts and feelings about what the soldiers had faced, they showed their feelings and duties, life or death, and overall fear and dedication. This story shows the theme of the physical and emotional burdens that everyone is going through in the war. By showing his readers what the soldier’s daily thoughts are and how they handle what is going on around them. Tim O’Brien expresses this theme by using characterization, symbolism, and tone continuously. In the story, physical and emotional burdens plagued several characters as they all had baggage weighing them down.