The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien

“The Things They Carried” is a book based on the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War took place between 1955 and 1975. The Vietnam War took place during the Cold War. The Cold War was a war between the United States, who were trying to spread democracy and the Soviet Union, who were trying to spread communism. The Vietnam War involved many countries such as the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam and China. The United States was trying to help the South Vietnamese avoid being taken over by the communist North. Ultimately, the North Vietnamese won the war. Vietnam today is 1 country and it is communist. Wars like the Vietnam War can cause soldiers to witness many traumatic events. To be able to deal with these traumatic events you need an outlet to be able to cope with them. Tim O’Brien has his writing and storytelling as in outlet while Azar has his ability to dehumanize the war. The outlets or the inability to have in outlet determines whether or not soldiers will be able to cope with war.

In the story The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien didn’t mention anything about traditional war heroes. I think this was a great idea, because there are no traditional war heroes. A traditional war hero is someone who is fearless and someone who can’t be harmed mentally or emotionally. But in The Things They Carried the soldiers out on the front lines were emotionally and physically scarred. Tim O’Brien didn’t write about traditional war heroes, O’Brien wrote about normal people, people with different views on the Vietnam war, and how the war affected these people.

Imagine one day you receive a mail from the government that you been draft to go a war at a different country. How would you feel if you know that purpose of this war is unreasonable in any senses? Angry, anxious or even confused. Vietnam War was “a personal failure on a national scale” (Hochgesang). There are many videos, documents and movies about the Vietnam War that show different angles of the Vietnam veterans’ experience and how the war really changes their life. In “The Things They Carried” written by Tim O’Brien, he argues about how the Vietnam War affect the soldiers in many ways, not only physically, but more important is the psychological effects before, during and after the war.

The Things They Carried is a war story based on the Vietnam War. One story the author, Tim O 'Brien tells is the story of Mary Anne, Mark Fossie’s childhood sweetheart. Mary Anne’s curiosity allows her to acquire knowledge about Vietnam’s culture and language. She wants to learn about Vietnam, the war and what they do. She also isn’t afraid and is eager to aid the casualties. One night she goes out on an ambition with the Green Berets, and the next day she and Fossie become engaged. Eventually she disappears for 3 weeks only to arrive at the special forces hut, and when seen Mary Anne is wearing the same outfit as before, but with a necklace of human tongues around her neck. She says what happened isn’t bad. In the end, she crossed to the other side never coming back, becoming one with the land. Mary Anne symbolizes war soldiers going through the war getting consumed by the darkness of the war.

On my honor as a lady, I have read the entirety of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.

War is courage. War is sacrifice. War is heroism, to the outsiders at least. To the young men fighting for their country daily, a decision that is far beyond their control, war strikes entirely different emotions in their minds. In Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried,” he reveals that soldiers carry much more than meets the eye. Yes, soldiers carry loads of physical items needed for survival, but what about the emotional and psychological aspects war leaves for the young soldiers to carry in their minds? In this segment of O’Brien’s novel, he exposes that what these young men experience in their time at war changes them forever. A soldier before and after the war are two completely different people, simply because war is powerful, and it has the ability to alter your mind and feelings permanently. O’Brien shows this through themes of distraction, guilt, and lost love.

Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” is based on what soldiers went through facing war, and what they carried physically as well as emotionally. All of this pressure from war can cause and has caused post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the soldiers. “PTSD is the development of a set of symptoms in the aftermath of psychologically distressing event—an event “outside the range of normal human experience.”” (Roberts 3). PTSD is a disorder that can happen to anyone, but many see it diagnosed in war veterans, from the effects of war. This disorder can ranges from outburst to solitude and can affect each person in a different way. Some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are re-experiencing or flashbacks,

Sometimes, however, no matter how much a soldier tried to find escapes for himself, obstacles would come in their way and force men to find other means of coping with reality. Many times this extra stress would come after a soldier killed someone, and felt overwhelming guilt for taking another human life. In The Things they Carried, there are not thousands of examples of this form of death, but we are made aware of one specific story. O 'Brien tells us about the man he killed, and the difficulty in releasing his guilt in this matter. He more than once describes the man in great detail, almost attempting to clear the event out of his mind even though he claims he "did not look on [his] work as therapy" (139, 179). This is a time when the best coping mechanism the men have is time and open ears. As they drag Tim away from the scene after giving him a few minutes to accept and process the death, Kiowa urges to "talk" (144). This is the only way he can

Many authors use storytelling as a vehicle to convey the immortality of past selves and those who have passed to not only in their piece of literature but in their life as an author. In Tim O’Brien’s work of fiction The Things They Carried, through his final chapter “The Lives of the Dead,” O 'Brien conveys that writing is a matter of survival since, the powers of storytelling can ensure the immortality of all those who were significant in his life. Through their immortality, O’Brien has the ability to save himself with a simple story. Through snippets of main plot event of other chapters, O’Brien speaks to the fact the dead have not actually left; they are gone physically, but not spiritually or emotionally. They live on in memories as Linda lives on in the memories of O’Brien and as many of his war buddies live on through his stories. He can revive them and bring them back to the world through his writings and through these emotions or events he experienced with them and with their deaths can make them immortal. Through the reminiscent stories of Linda and O’Brien’s war companions and himself, O’Brien conveys that storytelling allows people to reanimate others who have died and past selves to create an immortality of humans.

In Tim O 'Brien 's, The Things They Carried, many soldiers in the front line of the Vietnam War were psychologically and physically paralyzed by the war for many years after. The soldiers were left emotionally and mentally unstable for the rest of their life after the war.

Life can come to a stop sometimes when a person is weighed down by burdens. For some people it may be too difficult to live in the present while constantly thinking about the past and because of this are unable to move on. These can be burdens that they have been carrying for a long time or even recently. In the short story, “The Things They Carried,”Tim O’Brien uses symbolism, ambiguity, and a non-linear narrative structure to illustrate emotional burdens.

Death defines life; it has the ability to reinvent the living for better or worse. “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, provides a non-linear, semi-fictitious account of the Vietnam War that poignantly depicts the complicated relationship between life and death. His account breathes subtle vitality and realism into the lingering presence of the dead, intimating that the memories they impart have as profound an impact as the living.

Every one of us has experienced a strong emotional fear, and in that moment of stress, we learn more about who we are. The short story “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, follows the lives of soldiers trying to survive the emotional and physical stresses of the Vietnam War. Throughout the story, O’Brien juxtaposes the physical weight of the supplies that the soldiers must carry with the immeasurable weight of their intense emotional experiences. The theme of “The Things They Carried” is the burden of fear, which O’Brien portrays through the counter-weight of objects the soldiers cling to for consolation and escape. Some men turn to objects that remind them of love, no matter how unlikely it is that they are loved back. Other men

Fear is a term used to show and express one’s stressful emotions which are provoked by threat of immediate danger, evil, or pain; fear is the threat that can be real or imagined, and a feeling or condition of being afraid. The men in the Vietnam War felt this fear every single day and second they were on foot in Vietnam. War is an incredible mystery that many civilians and everyday ordinary people will never understand. The fear of death lurking around every corner, knowing that any second your life can end in a flash. The fact you are killing and ending someone else’s life for a reason you may fully not understand is truly a terrible thought to imagine. Realizing there was nowhere to hide or run, not knowing when death will be coming is the true fear of it all that many wanted not to experience firsthand. In the novel The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction, Tim O’Brien unfolds the story of young men, himself, and the unforgiving truth about the draft, who among many resisted and dodged the Vietnam War are told through experiences and stories in the novel.

In the novel, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien there is an ambiguity assigned to the life of a soldier in the Vietnam war, an ambiguity that represents no clear moral victor, no clear heroes, and seemingly no end. In the movie, Platoon, written and directed by Oliver Stone, the same ambiguity is depicted, with no clear moral direction, no clear heroes, and no clear resolution. In the short story, “How to Tell a True War Story,” O’Brien talks in great detail about how a true war story, and not some reimagining, “is never moral” (O’Brien) and “cannot be believed” (O’Brien). According to O’Brien, the movie Platoon will qualify as a true war story because it is not moral, hard to believe, and has no clear resolution.