Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Rat Kiley’s platoon essentially understand and accept his decision as they know where Kiley is coming from. Lieutenant Cross even vouches for Kiley’s injury. The squadron essentially understand Kiley battles with larger tensions and stress than other soldiers as he has been on the warfront longer than most men in his platoon. Kiley has endured many deaths, considering his role as a medic. Kiley has constantly battled with the fear of death, considering his outcries on how he imagines his guts and liver oozing out like that of the soldiers he has tended to.

He was instinalty killed, because his body was blown into a nearby tree. Later that day, the Alpha Company came upon a baby buffalo, wandering alone. Not knowing how to deal with the sudden, gruesome death of his best friend, Rat took his anger out of the buffalo. Rat began to shoot bits of the baby buffalo. He shot off it’s ear, mouth, nose, tail, and parts of it’s ribs and belly.

In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brian, the author discusses distinct items the soldiers carry with them during the Vietnam war. He explores weapons and equipment, but also talks about emotions and feelings the men frequently are approached by. The title of the novel is used to highlight the heavy emotional burden the soldiers had to carry during and after the war. In many cases, a soldier felt responsible for the death of one of his closest comrades.

During the War young men were taken away from fully experiencing their adolescence lives and were sent to fight in war. In the short story, “The things they carried” by Tim O’Brien, the narrator discusses his personal experience in the Vietnam War along with his fellow soldiers. He tells the story in an unusual way when he shares parts of his story from past and changes to present which allows the reader to feel the emotions and experience what each soldier went through and learn more about the characters personalities. O’ Brien uses an unusual narrative technique that allows the reader to visualize the experiences they went through such as death and guilt. Throughout the story we also learn more about the characters personalities and the importance

The author begins by calling the gassing of the woodchucks “merciful” which is her idea of how to kill people by being lenient. Even though there is pain in gassing someone/something to death, it is not as severe as being killed by a gunshot. The author demonstrates her everyday situations and actions that he has committed. “I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace puffed with Darwinian

The book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a collection of stories from the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien was drafted into the war in 1968 and remained there until 1970 (“The Things They Carried”, N.d.). Kiowa is a Native American and he is gentle and peaceful. He discourages excessive violence but understands difficult decisions of war may not always please his gentle nature. Even though Kiowa strongly opposes excessive violence he later finds his platoon under attack and tragically loses his life fighting for a war he did not fully agree with.

In Tim O’brien’s short story, “The Things They Carried,” O’brien explains more than just what people face at war. O’Brien gives detail of each burden, struggle, and memory each soldier carries into the war. He describes of a battle more destructive than a war filled with guns, bombs, and knives. He describes of a mind battle, one in which is the hardest any man can face. A mind battle controls your every decision.

Most war stories are labeled as fiction or nonfiction; however Tim O’Brien breaks this rule in The Things They Carried by creating a fictitious story that yet seeps the truth, and labelling it as a work of fiction. The book is compiled of various stories that correlate together, but it can be unclear what is fact and what is fiction. O’Brien purposely does this to draw in the reader to question what is and what isn’t, and no one exactly knows the right answer. By utilizing intentional, rhetorical tactics, O’Brien has the power of blurring the lines between fact and fiction; which allows the reader to distinguish between fact and fiction in chapters, such as “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, “Stockings”, and “Speaking of Courage”.

Author and war veteran Tim O’Brien, in his novel The Things They Carried, unveils the struggles and obstacles that soldiers are faced with. What they must overcome will help them gain back the life they used to live. The combination of the moral and emotional struggles, along with the memories that are trapped within them, make their lives tough to get back. The constant battle between themselves and the memories they have experienced, develops a barrier for soldiers to go against to gain back their lives from before.

The next morning he shot himself”(O'brien 212). This quote portrays Rat Kiley's loss of humanity; he is going crazy. Rat Kiley was becoming mentally ill; he believed bugs wanted to kill him and that caused him to shoot himself in the foot. Rat Kiley lost the rationality of a normal person due to the stress and experience of the Vietnam war. In the chapter Rat Kiley experiences internal conflict.

The Things He Felt Written by Tim O’Brien and being a postwar novel, The Things They Carried differs highly from the other books associated with the same genre by its unique structure and distinctive approach towards events. The book does not have an uninterrupted flow, nor does it leave the audience with the satisfaction of knowing the exact truth. However, these lacks turn out being precisely what O’Brien aspires to accomplish. Throughout the novel, the narrator rotates around his memories “...clockwise as if in orbit”(133), not being able to identify a starting or an ending point, thus conveying his experiences to the reader in the same way he feels: blurry, repetitive and ambiguous.

He experiences the traumatic death of his “best friend” (75) early in the book. During a break deep in the jungle, Rat and Curt Lemon have begun goofing off, tossing around smoke grenades. “A nature hike, they [had] thought, not even war” (66). The next moment, the war has become real as Lemon steps on a landmine, his body blowing into pieces and hanging on surrounding trees. Although Lemon’s death is traumatic for all soldiers, it especially affects Rat Kiley, who feels responsible for the death.

In order to get rid of the rats they used rat poison and when they would get the meat there was dead rats in there as well their poison and they would drag the meat on the ground

Rat went to automatic. He shot randomly, almost casually, quick little spurts in the belly and butt. Then he reloaded, squatted down, and shot it in the left front knee. Again the animal fell hard and tried to get up, but this time it couldn't quite make it... All the while the baby buffalo was silent, or almost silent, just a light bubbling sound where the nose had been.

The author chose anicdotes that are incomprehendable, therefore adding to the inhumane ideals and thought processes they developed in war, “After supper Rat Kiely went over and stroked its nose. He opened up a can of C rations, pork and beans, but the baby buffalo wasn’t interested. [... Rat] stepped back and shot it right through the front knee” (O’Brien 6). Rat’s best friend had died earlier that day. Rat never learned coping, he never had to face watching his best friend die, adn therefore never had to cope with his grief, leading him to put his anger towards a baby water buffalo.