The Things They Carried by Tim O’brien

Tim O’Brien composed an amazing book about his views towards the Vietnam war and his life during his time serving in the war. He brings you a different perspective that changes with time and as he becomes hardened to the tragedies of war. Despite his obvious bias he has created an intriguing story that can open the eyes of many to different subjects and the reality that is war.

The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien begins by Mr. O'Brien describing his dramatical events that happened during the middle of his Vietnam experience while he was fighting in the war. Mr. O'Brien received his draft notice in the month of June in the year of 1968. When he received this notice Mr. O'Brien had feelings of confusion, and that drove him to go north to the Canadian border, and it had him contemplating if he wanted to cross it or not because he does not want to be forced to fight in a war he really does not believe in. However, Mr. O'Brien finally decides that he would feel guilty if he avoided the war and he also feared that his family would be disappointed. Not only does this novel tell us readers about his

The novel itself is a flashback to the pass of a nightmare that he will never forget. O’ Brien is still alive, I cannot imagine having flash backs to the past and being reminded of a frightening nightmare. The best flashback in the novel reads “his right arm was gone… At his face there were already many flies and gnats.” O’Brien then revisits his childhood: “Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love…. she died of course. Nine years old and she died.” This situation in the time of war brought him to think of someone he truly loved. Flashbacks are

O’Brien reveals the purpose of his writing during a radio interview, “The goal, I suppose, any fiction has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human” (Conan 5). O’Brien writes so his readers are able to feel something in regards to his truths. Admittedly, his writing is not always accurate to his war experience but he wants the reader to feel sympathy towards him for what he has seen and gone through. O’Brien still holds a resentment for those who kept him in Vietnam (“Vietnam”) and he wants someone to understand his frustrations and everything he had to undergo just because someone decided that he had to; he stretches the truth in his novel so the reader can justify his emotions, which is difficult to ask for, resulting in an endorsement that is able to lessen Vietnam’s impact on him (Rodriguez 511). Furthermore, he uses language to evoke strong, palpable reactions from his audience.

The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.

The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.

On the fields and rice paddies of Vietnam, O’Brien constantly questions himself as to why he was a victor in the game of life and death. It is evident that there is some form of guilt that messes with him causing him to create these stories to extend the lives of those whose lives were cut short. Another form of ‘guilt’ by being one of the few survivors plays another role in the development of reviving and remembering his very first crush as a child, Linda. Linda had died when she was just nine years old to an incurable brain tumor. O’Brien’s use of his memory to reconstruct social settings and feelings allow him to repair and mend the wounds caused by her death. Experiencing the death of what O’Brien would consider a loved one, would have

In this final chapter, O’Brien strings the various threads of plot events together to form a cohesive message. Each of the major themes is illuminated as each of the major stories is retold mostly told about Vietnam and a younger version of himself

In “Lives of the Dead”, O’Brien’s own innocence is preserved through the memory of Linda, a memory that remains untarnished by the inevitable corruption that results from life. O’Brien’s writings “save Linda’s life. Not her body--her life” (236). Storytelling and memories preserve the value of Linda’s existence while simultaneously allowing O’Brien to process death and destruction in a way that maintains a degree of optimism regarding his own life and future. Juxtaposing the images of body and life emphasizes his desire to save the idea of Linda while accepting the loss of her physical presence. O’Brien rejects the idea of death as absolute and final; instead he suggests that “once you are alive, you can never be dead” (244). Linda’s death solidifies her importance in O’Brien’s own development; she teaches him about life and real love as much as in death as in life. O’Brien’s paradoxical statement defines the lasting impact of Linda on him; her presence in his stories keeps her alive through memory; memories that even her death

O’Brien illuminates the fear in the protagonist, as he describes his (Tim’s) fear of the war but also, being an outcast within his own family “Tim” feels everything that makes him who he is will be lost even if he survives the war. (O’Brien, 1990, pg. 42). As the protagonists flees to Wisconsin on his way to Canada, to avoid the draft, he came upon little cabin where this older person knew why he was there. The old man lets “Tim” stay in the woods, there he cuts wood, fishes and repairs the cabin while he makes peace with himself only to return home, not be cowardice, and serve his country. Here the protagonists stayed several days thinking he can flee to the border easier since it was just across the lake, then comes to his senses hence, returns to face his fear of future death and

O’Brien, forty-three years old, dates back to when he “was drafted to fight a war he hated.” He planned on attending Harvard for a graduate study on a full-ride scholarship. He was way “Too smart, too compassionate, too everything ”: he knew what he wanted to do and who he was; although, the Vietnam war had no interest for the lives of its soldiers. For Tim O’Brien, he was pulled from Minnesota; for other soldiers, they were pulled from their respective hometowns-- all were taken out of comfortability to devastation. This memory moment, along with others, develops the setting by displaying

Drawing upon the ability of fiction to preserve life against death, O 'Brien says that, during wartime, that they were able to "[keep] the dead alive with stories" (239). To the living, stories were a way to keep the memory of the dead alive, but to the dead, it was the simple act of remembering that kept them alive: "That 's what a story does. The bodies are animated. You make the dead talk" (232). This theme of preservation is exemplified by story of Linda, in which O 'Brien uses the power of storytelling and memory to keep people alive: "Stories can save us. I 'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive...They 're all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world." (225).

From his experience as a newspaper reporter, O’Brien was able to quickly develop his writing skills which paved his way into the field of fiction publications. Currently in his career, Tim O’Brien serves as a visiting professor at the University of Southwest Texas State where he teaches creative writing and is also a member of the advisory board for Ridenhour Prizes. Moreover, the Vietnam War, in which Tim O’Brien was drafted into, was a desperate American struggle against the spread of Communism. Occurring during the Cold War era, America struggled with the Soviet Union in an event called the “Red Scare” which was a phase of the quickly spreading Communist government. In Vietnam, the war is actually known as the “American War” due to America’s deep involvement in the war efforts. More than two million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters were killed during the span of the Vietnam War. Overall, the main cause for O’Brien’s opposition to the draft notice was that American involvement in Vietnam progressively became highly unpopular and overtime American citizens began to forget the reasons behind the war effort. Tim O’Brien was given a short notice and eventually forced to immediately leave his family in order to begin training and preparation for the war. The draft notice was a large

Tim O' Brien, a soldier affected by the Vietnam War, reflects on his experiences when his daughter asks herself if he has ever taken a life. When she is nine years old, nearly 20 years after the Vietnam War is over, Kathleen asks her a question. Has he ever killed someone, she wants to know. O’Brien decides to tell her that he hasn’t. It felt like the “right thing to do”; he thinks when she is a grown-up she will understand better. Maybe then O’Brien will tell her about the slim young man who still obsesses him, whom he still thinks about when reading the newspaper.

Tim O’Brien tells the story of him and his platoon in Vietnam as well as a little about what each had experienced before and after the war. He tells each story in different way to elaborate on different things that happened around the same time. This complicated method emphasizes how he and each of his platoon member felt together while in Nam.It may jump from tale to tale in the stroy, but it has a clear message. In the story The Things They Carried O’Brien explains in different ways about being away from home can cause dramatic changes to someone in an alienating or a beneficial way.