Theme Of Women In The Things They Carried

In the short story “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien wrote about the experience of war and the feelings young soldiers felt during their long days of travel. During the story he keeps referring back to the things the soldiers chose to carry in their packs. Some of these items included necessity items like grenades and ammunition, but they also carry sentimental items like love letters and pictures. These items help the reader better understand each person for who they are and help us to understand the physical situation the soldiers are in. In “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien describes the item the soldiers carry in their packs and the emotional weight they carry to help give a better

They carry many things, they carry a massive amount of weight on their shoulders. However, the heaviest thing that they carry cannot be touched. The intangible weight of fear, loss, anger, and guilt far outweigh any tangible item that they could possibly possess. The Thing They Carried is not only an eye-opening collection of war stories, but it is also a love story, a memoir, and a tribute to the unimaginable things that happen to our soldiers in war zones. War changes men, makes them different, and when they come home they are not the same person and they often have trouble readjusting to the life of a civilian.

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

In The Things We Carried, We learned that men are not the only one’s that have part of the war but, also that women are part of the war as well. Have you ever thought that you as a women ever wanted to be part of the war? To want everyone in the world believe that a women can also be apart of the war? Well to demonstrate to you there are three young courageous women in The Things They Carried, that want us women to become apart of the war. Back in the 1950’s women had rights to be in the war and to help take care of men that were wounded severely.

In the story The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien shows the reader a sense of depressing love. O’Brien uses the physical weight carried by the soldiers as a motif for the emotional burdens they must endure while fighting in Vietnam. A love of which is portrayed in the story with a soldier loving a woman more than his fellow soldiers. But this woman does not love him in the same way. O’Brien uses many literary devices throughout the story, and shall be covered in this text. The tone in the text is very prevalent, and O’Brien gives the reader easy access to find and understand them.

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses this story as a coping mechanism; to tell part of his stories and others that are fiction from the Vietnamese War. This is shown by using a fictions character’s voice, deeper meaning in what soldier’s carried, motivation in decision making, telling a war story, becoming a new person and the outcome of a war in one person. Tim O’ Brien uses a psychological approach to tell his sorrows, and some happiness from his stories from the war. Each part, each story is supposed to represent a deeper meaning on how O’Brien dealt, and will deal with his past. In war, a way to

There are many levels of truth in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. This novel deals with story-telling as an act of communication and therapy, rather than a mere recital of fact. In the telling of war stories, and instruction in their telling, O'Brien shows that truth is unimportant in communicating human emotion through stories.

Most authors who write about war stories write vividly; this is the same with Tim O’Brien as he describes the lives of the soldiers by using his own experiences as knowledge. In his short story “The Things They Carried” he skillfully reveals realistic scenes that portray psychological, physical and mental burdens carried by every soldier. He illustrates these burdens by discussing the weights that the soldiers carry, their psychological stress and the mental stress they have to undergo as each of them endure the harshness and ambiguity of the Vietnam War. One question we have to ask ourselves is if the three kinds of burdens carried by the soldier’s are equal in size? “As if in slow motion, frame by frame, the world would take on the old

War is a terrible event. When it ignites, it is like an unquenchable fire consuming the countries involved and the people who fight for them. Everyone is affected in some way. The men will go off to fight for their country. The women are constantly worried about their loved one’s whereabouts and the children constantly miss their fathers. The elderly are also affected they see their sons coming home in body bags, in some instances for a fight that is not their own. And then there are the soldiers and how they have been negatively affected by living through it. Respectively, the two literary works that were written by former soldiers of World War 1 and the Vietnam War include the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen and the short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien came as a result of the authors’ personal backgrounds relating to war, the effect of the technology of that time period, and their mentality of perceiving war.

An accurate portrayal is given from the point of view of someone that is trying to give a truthful and realistic account of a situation. The person must look past other outside influences and give their view and feelings on the subject in order to produce an accurate portrayal. The Things They Carried contained many accurate portrayals of the soldiers who were fighting in Vietnam. The novel opened up to those who have not experienced war and let the reader see the effects of war on soldiers and the soldier’s interpretation on what they went through. Although The Things They Carried is a fiction novel, it gives a truthful depiction of how battle, combat, and the entire presence of war affects a person and alters them in many ways. O’Brien reflected on when he “There was that coldness inside of me. I wasn’t myself. I felt hollow and dangerous,” he realized that war had changed him into being a more “cold” person (207). In this situation, he knew he was guilty and went from courageous to a coward in only a few chapters. We have one select person telling their experience that may not be considered historically accurate because of bias or exaggeration, although we are still their hearing their accurate portrayal of what happened and how it affected

“The Things They Carried” provides a personal view into the minds of soldiers, and tells us the emotional and psychological costs of war. The soldiers may have carried physical objects, but some of these objects connect to a deeper psychological weight most do not see.

Why do we blame Helen’s beauty for the Trojan War or Eve’s curious nature for Adam’s choice to eat the apple, thus beginning the mortal human civilization? Throughout history men have found it convenient to hold women responsible for their own weaknesses and intolerance. The apathy of anti-feminist and conservative movements showcases the reality of the Stockholm syndrome and medieval serfdom. Men have been the captors and the masters of the women for time in antiquity, but we still see empathy in women. Henry Kissinger could not have summarized it any better when he said, “Nobody will ever win the Battle of the Sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy.” Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is neither

"All that crap about how if we had a pussy for president there wouldn't be no more wars. Pure garbage. You got to get rid of that sexist attitude."

War is an ugly thing that tends to affect people in different ways and thus people cope in different ways: Some people go insane, some become numb, some turn to drugs, and some process their thoughts by writing. All of these responses are present in The Things They Carried. There is not necessarily one right way to respond to the horrors of war, or life in general, but some insight can be gained by comparing how different characters in the book coped and how they turned out. Different responses exemplified by characters in The Things They Carried are writing, drug use, and loss of humanity. These responses can give insight into different facets of human nature.