War In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

Mary Anne Bell was a young girl who was brought to Vietnam by her boyfriend Mark. She was known to be, “coy and flirtatious” (O’Brien 91). She was always curious, asking lots of questions about things. She started to get more distant from Mark.

In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried the narrator, Tim O’Brien, often blurs the lines between reality and fiction. As a young soldier, O’Brien recalls the Vietnam war including the sounds, sights, and his emotions, while 20 years later he again shares his feelings and experiences of the same event. This same event, however, is told differently in order to help him cope with the emotional pain of war. The details become blurry as the pain is too great to endure.

More often than not, soldiers and people in a war zone will be affected by the war one way or another. Either that being during or after the war, one could have a negative or positive outlook on the war, but one single event could automatically change that person's behavior. During 1957-1973, the longest war in the United States history took place, the Vietnam War. Many soldiers have lost their lives in this battle, but the ones that survived have significantly changed from this event.

He wants the readers to feel what he felt. He tells these stories to deal with his guilt. It first starts off with Tim O’Brien receiving his draft notice, “In June 1968…I was drafted to fight a war I hated.” (O’Brien 1990,

People often reminisce about the decisive victories and suffering defeats of war, but the overwhelming horrors and tragedies of the actual soldiers are often overlooked. Because of this harsh truth, Tim O’Brien sheds light on the physical and psychological burdens on the life of a common soldier through his autobiography, The Things They Carried. Despite all the atrocities found in the Vietnam War, O’Brien still manages to appreciate life and all the people around him. Through all of this, everyone who reads this book can learn something new about the world around them in addition to something about themselves. Ultimately, The Things They Carried should stay in the curriculum because it truly shows the terrors and hardships of war, exemplifies

O’Brien starts off the chapter with Rat telling the story of Mary coming to Vietnam. Tim gives hints about Rat’s character when he tells about how he tells stories like “he wanted to heat up the truth”(85) or “facts were formed by sensation”(85). After Rat is given a short background, Tim moves on to explain his story of Mary. Rat describes her characteristics like “barely out of high school”(86) and “white culottes and this sexy pink sweater”(86). Rat’s choice of words helps describe Mary’s innocent tone and portrays her naive and new mind to Vietnam.

When most people think of war, they think of all the physical damages, terror, and destruction. Even though the physical damages and deaths are scary and can cause burdens, the emotional stance and psychological effects of war are the more devastating and destructive parts of war. Throughout the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien articulates how times of war brings out the powerful effects of shame, guilt, and fear on the human mind. The intangible negative emotions that every soldier carries may not have physical weight, but is a burden that every man possesses. Shame; the feeling of embarrassment, feeling as if other people are judging the actions one takes.

People go through life experiencing both big and small events. The soldiers had to deal with fear, guilt ,and death at war. These things can change a person for the better, or for the worse, but it’s what they do after the events that make them who they are. For soldiers in war, this is what they have to deal with everyday when they were in Vietnam fighting. Tim O’Brien tells of these stories in The Things They Carried to show how war can change their mentality and their destiny in life.

Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

The author creates a sense of sadness and pity throughout the novel, causing the reader to sympathize with the characters. The emotional language used throughout the book heightens the experiences and war memories of the soldiers, causing the reader to feel the same terror. An example of this terror is in the chapter On the Rainy River when the narrator writes, “I did not want to die”(36). The narrator explained before that the draft did not let you choose your war, meaning if a soldier did not want to fight he doesn’t have that option. The draft does not give an option for not joining the war, and this makes the reader sympathize for the characters because it makes them put themselves in the characters shoes.

This chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”, showed us how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were dealing with the war both physically and psychologically. It also shows us how the Tim O'Brien behaved and felt when he was shot, wounded and had a bacteria infection on his butt and how the war changed the way he thought, and viewed the other soldiers around him. This chapter also contain a lot of psychological lens. From the way Tim O’Brien felt when he was shot and separated from his unit to a new unit to when he wanted revenge on Bobby Jorgenson for almost “killing” him.

He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.

How he hated being drafted and how badly he wanted to run away. He tells how he took time to himself to decide whether or not he was going to run away and risk being caught and imprisoned or go join the army and risk dying over in Vietnam. He states at the end, “ I passed through twins with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward.

Although the soldier he killed was an enemy soldier, instead of vilifying him he was able to humanize the man. O’Brien was able to describe the physical appearance of the soldier and imagine her life before war. The author was able to portray an emotional connection and made the line between friend and enemy almost vanish. This was able to reveal the natural beauty of shared humanity even in the context of war’s horror. O’Brien is able to find the beauty in the midst of this tragic and horrible event.

In the book, The Things They Carried, the narrator, and author, Tim O'Brien faces several different obstacles that he has to overcome. The main one that he goes through all starts when he gets his draft notice for the Vietnam Wa. He has to decide whether or not he should be brave, and fight. Or if he should pack up his things, and leave for Canada. For some people, making the decision to go to war or to flee would be a no brainer, but it was a different story for Tim O' Brien.