Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: A Literary Analysis

“By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining the masks of composure” (21). In Tim O’brien’s The Things They Carried, the American soldiers of the Vietnam War carry much more than the weight of their equipment, much more than souvenirs or good-luck charms or letters from home. They carried within themselves the intransitive burdens—of fear, of cowardice, of love, of loneliness, of anger, of confusion. Most of all, they carry the truth of what happened to them in the war—a truth that only those who fought in the jungles and the mountains and the marshes of Vietnam can ever understand. These men can share their stories; but all that’s all they are to everyone else: stories.

The portrayal of the Vietnam war in Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried, is significantly influenced by the female character Martha. Although her parts in the book were meager in comparison to the men's, O'Brien's beautifully crafted work wouldn't have been complete without the themes of love and separation, danger and focus, and the tension between reality and fantasy, of which she presented. Consequently, Martha’s contribution is powerful even in the shadow of the other

Written by author Tim O’Brien after his own experience in Vietnam, “The Things They Carried” is a short story that introduces the reader to the experiences of soldiers away at war. O’Brien uses potent metaphors with a third person narrator to shape each character. In doing so, the reader is able to sympathize with the internal and external struggles the men endure. These symbolic comparisons often give even the smallest details great literary weight, due to their dual meanings. The symbolism in “The Things They Carried” guides the reader through the complex development of characters by establishing their humanity during the inhumane circumstance of war, articulating what the men need for emotional and spiritual survival, and by revealing

War is only experienced by those brave enough to enter and endure the hardships of it, and is difficult to understand what it means to step foot on the battlefield and suffer through it. In the first chapter of the novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O’brien, a group of soldiers are making their way through Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and go through many physical and mental hardships. These hardships are very difficult for most people to understand, so the author addresses them. Throughout the chapter, the author is able to show the correlation between war and love through his descriptive, symbolistic lists and the character Martha, a woman loved by one of the soldiers.

The story “The Things They Carried” reveals emotional and physical challenges soldiers face during the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien introduces the reader not only to the subject of war and physical exhaustion, but also to human feelings and inner struggle soldiers are going through at this war. Besides the equipment and necessary things, soldiers carried emotions which strengthen their hope of staying alive in order to continue their mission. Tim O’Brien uses female figure, Martha, to create psychological escape which distracts a young soldier, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, from the war. However, such a distraction leads to the death of a group member, Ted Lavender. The illusion of love for Martha and false hopes gradually transform into bitter feeling of guilt and the harsh reality of war. Tim O’Brien masterfully describes Jimmy Cross’ and other soldier’s experience and feelings during

You may not have realized it, but in The Things They Carried, there are many sources of symbolism planted throughout the book. The Things they carried by Tim O’Brien is about O'brien's experience in the war; he shares his experience through vignettes. Throughout this essay I will be talking about how Tim O'brien uses symbolism to open descriptions of emotional and physical burdens.

Tim O’Brien represents in his book The Things They Carried very well how the war changed the life of the soldiers. When they came to the war they were teenager, who were in one way very excited and proud to fight. The war did not just changed the view of the soldiers about the war, it also changed how the soldiers perceived what happened. The perception from soldiers change during the war, because soldiers started to perceive happening differently than it actually happened in reality.

The author beings the story by discussing items that were carried, which were everyday life things, such as cigarettes, matches, sewing kits, and water. These items made life in Vietnam bearable for the time being. Colleagues, Henry Dobson carried canned peaches and pound cake, while Dave Jenson carried extra hygiene supplies. Tim O’Brien also mentions Lieutenant Cross’ obsession with a girl named Martha and how he carries her letters. This shows the author’s lack of expressing his true emotions by only discussing non-military items, however, he mentions the soldier who died, Ted Lavender. He was so scared that he carried tranquilizers and in mid-April he was shot in the head. Although this was a vital pathos rhetorical device, it was described

Take a step back in time and imagine what it would be like to be in the Vietnam War. Author, Tim O’Brien, has been through the Vietnam War and has seen first hand the horrors of the war. Throughout the book, The Things They Carried, O’Brien describes and informs what the war is really like and what goes through the soldier's mind. O’Brien includes the experiences he had with his unit focusing on men such as Norman Bowker, Lieutenant Cross, Kiowa, and Rat Kiley. O'Brien uses many different literary elements to explain what he has gone through and what the other soldiers have gone through as well during their time in the Vietnam War. O’Brien uses imagery to describe the Freedom Bird, the Tip Top Lodge, and the environment of Vietnam. O'Brien

After reading pages 19-20 of The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien provides readers with numerous literary devices that make it easier for readers to interpret the thoughts, actions, and lives of the soldiers. To begin with, the first literary device that he used is parallelism. O'Brien repeatedly uses the word and to add additional phrases that gives dramatic effect and emphasis on how the soldiers reacted to the war. He says, “They twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop.” When O'Brien says this, it lets readers know that being in war isn't a walk in the park, lots of pain is being inflicted upon the soldiers, like how they have to consider the possibility of dying which produces fear as their unconditioned response. Additionally, this can also be an example of the literary term cacophony. The words cringed, and sobbed, and begged, are words that sound unpleasant and describes the situation as unpalatable.

In Tim O’Brien’s short story, “The Things They Carried”, a young man is leading a troop of men in the Vietnam War and is having an internal conflict with missing a woman back home. He becomes so distracted by the woman that he loses focus on keeping his men safe. However, when one of his men gets murdered by a sniper, he soon comes to the realization that he cannot afford to dream because it can cost the lives of the men surrounding him. O’Brien uses many literary elements in his writing. These elements include tone, symbolism, and irony. O’Brien uses tone, symbolism, and irony to prove that distractions come with a price.

The Things They Carried, a novel by Tim O’Brien, tells stories of soldiers in the Vietnam War. Some of the characters, all soldiers of the Alpha Company, include Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, Tim O’Brien, Rat Kiley, Kiowa, Mitchell Sanders, Ted Lavender, and Norman Bowker, among others. In the beginning, the author describes all the things that soldiers of the war carry. He includes everything material and intangible, including the universal objects: weapons, a poncho, letters, fears, and expectations. Each of the soldiers also carries specific and unique objects. For example, Henry Dobbins carries his girlfriends pantyhoes around his neck because of his superstitious nature, Ted Lavender carries marijuana and tranquilizers because of his nervousness, and Kiowa carries a New Testament Bible because of his father’s religiousness. The Lieutenant carries letters and photos from Martha, a college girl he fantasizes about. Because he becomes so engrossed in thinking of her, he loses focus on the important tasks of war at hand.

The common perspective of a wolf is a terrorist who kills innocent people and commits horrible crimes, however, horrific actions such as these are not the only things that can classify someone as a wolf. A wolf does not have to physically harm others in order to earn that title. It is not uncommon to be hurting emotionally and it has the potential to cause physical harm when taken too far. I believe that those who hurt innocent people emotionally are just as wolfly as those who physically harm others. Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried” is a unique novel composed of many short stories, all of which have the ability to be taken as individual short stories, or can be put together to form one long novel. These short stories focus on war, the real truth, the emotional truth, and the lies. There are many instances where the narrator, Tim O’Brien (not to be confused with the author), proves himself to be an extremely wolfly man through these stories. He illustrates, time and time again, his wolfly characteristics such as betrayal of his friends, manipulation of his readers’ emotions, and sheer fabrication of horrible stories.

In conclusion, a personal connection to something that means so little to others can be a huge impact for someone else. In the novel, “The Things They Carried”, the author Tim O’Brien uses pieces of things that had a major impact toward the soldiers and talks about how it prevents insanity. He shows this through symbolism in the characters, like Norman Bowker, Henry Dobbins, including the author himself. All throughout the novel, the author chose to use the soldier's pain in a way that makes them unique. The author expresses how the soldiers dealt with their pain through the war, and Henry Dobbins way of coping was by sniffing his girlfriend's pantyhose while reminiscing the times they had together. That is an example of how the author uses

War can portray love and hate connotations ; reflects the variety of emotions felt by the soldiers. In 1990, after his experiences in Vietnam, Tim O’Brien an anti-war retired Veteran published “The Things They Carried”, an ashamed, unjustifiable collection of short stories that evaluate the regret and cowardness he felt of having fought in a pointless war. Afterwards in 2012, after his tour of duty in Iraq, Chris Kyle a pro-war retired Navy SEAL published a prologue to “American Sniper” , an ardent, unabashed memoir of his pride of having had served in a war that was his duty and job to be in. Tim O’ Brien uses symbolism and similes to reflect the soldiers’ “normal” lives lost in war and sacrifices made. However Chris Kyle uses synecdoche