The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien Summary

O’Brien explains it is important to have your mind battle-free so distractions will not flood your attempt of making successful decisions. Each soldier carried more than just big controlling weapons; they carried distractions. Each soldier carried individual different items which caused them each to be distracted from the real mission. The items were determined by necessity. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters along with the two photographs of Martha, the woman he loved, in his wallet.

Jimmy Cross, who is the Lieutenant of the Alpha Company carries is reminders of his crush Martha, who is a girl he met in college in New Jersey. After long marches he will usually take out letters and other things he has from her and remember their first and only date they had which was going to the movies, this is a prime example of things the soldiers carry that have significant meaning to them. This is just a quick synopsis of the book and just one key character that is

Tim O’Brien writes us a wonderful fictional tale of a platoon of men in vietnam during the vietnam war, The Things They Carried shows the reader that when the men are over in this distant and strange land, not only do they carry physical objects, but emotional baggage and ideas that truly make, or break a man in war. Tim and his men show several signs of stress and turmoil while fighting the war, and while they survive they begin to understand what is really means to live, die, and what is right, and wrong. While over in vietnam the men are in a war, not a simple skirmish or fight, but a full on war against an enemy that they were not sure they are the enemy. The men would walk from location from location seeing what there is to do and trying

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”.

Tim O’Brien, author of “The Things They Carried”, tells a war tale which contains no heroes because his story showcases the blunt reality of war. Many men, in the past, did not go to war to become heroes; rather they were forced to enlist because of the military draft or because they felt cowardly due to the expectations of society. Tim O’Brien chose to share his story because he wanted non-military civilians to learn the truth about war; the realistic side of war that the news and Hollywood films won’t show you. War is hell; it is painful, traumatizing, and completely life changing, to say the least. In my opinion, O’Brien gives readers an inside look and understanding of how there are no heroes of war, because fighting for a cause that

In The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien constructs a seemingly autobiographical yet ostensibly fictional story of the war in Vietnam and its effects on a platoon of American soldiers. O’Brien’s inclusion of fact within fiction strengthens the rhetoric of the individual stories in The Things They Carried while leaving readers to question the overall truthfulness and validity of the stories. The members of the American platoon also question plausibility when struggling to grasp the credibility of Rat Kiley’s story of his first assignment near the Song Tra Bong river. Kiley describes his time in the Chu Liu mountains when a young medic named Mark Fossie decides to bring a girl named Mary Anne to the camp to demonstrate the camp’s lack of safety.

The Things They Carried, a novel by Tim O’Brien and published in 2009, examines what it was like to have fought in the Vietnam War, through memory, imagination, and the powerful ability of storytelling. Throughout his book O’Brien writes a series of vignettes and describes what it was like during the war, and the effects it had on him a decade later. There was one part in particular that really caught my attention. In the chapter,“How to Tell a True War Story”, O’Brien mentions how Rat Kiley, a Vietnam soldier, writes a letter and he was not pleased with the outcome. As I am sitting on my bed reading one of the chapters in the novel, “How to Tell a True War Story,” I begin to see a flashback of my own life.

The Things They Carried is a collection of stories written by Tim O’Brien to depict what soldiers, including himself, had experienced while fighting across seas in the Vietnam War. The collection of stories begins with a section titled “The Things They Carried”. Tim O'brien is the main character, and he is a soldier fighting with his fellow comrades in a group named Alpha Company and he describes the belongings and equipment that each soldier carries while also providing a short background of a few men. Many characters reappear throughout the collection of stories that are told by Tim.

The book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is about the Vietnam War and the physical and mental burdens that soldiers carried, but it is not just about the violence of war, it is also a love story. O’ Brien interweaves the characters of Mary Anne, Martha and Kathleen into the novel in sporadic ways that at first it just seems random, but it is done that way to remind the reader that sometimes there is no war without love, and that is the role of the women in this story. Each one of them serves the purpose of being a beacon of light that shines through the darkness that is war. One of the most influential female in O’Brien’s story is Kathleen, his ten year old daughter. She is one of the reasons that O’Brien explains his war experience

In 1990, Tim O’Brien published a powerful collection of short stories that was carefully composed into the novel, The Things They Carried. This novel has allowed many readers to gain insight on the appalling, yet realistic aspects of the Vietnam War that are otherwise not typically shared. O’Brien takes specific events from his own war life and applies them to stories in which various characters learn lessons on integrity, politics, rationality, life, and love. Without a doubt, O’Brien tackles difficult themes regarding life at war that allows others to feel the pain and horror that the characters are experiencing. Beyond the plethora of the themes shared, O’Brien specifically emphasizes how difficult situations can test the strength of love

At multiple points throughout the novel, the author discusses the difference between “story truth” and “happening truth.” The latter is simple to define:

In his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores the power of storytelling as a means of conveying the complex experiences of soldiers in the Vietnam War. Throughout the novel, O’Brien distinguishes between "Happening Truth," which refers to objective facts of events, and "Story Truth," which refers to the subjective emotional and psychological realities of those events. Through the use of these two concepts, O’Brien creates a series of interconnected stories that blur the line between fact and fiction, and ultimately serves as a testament to the enduring power of storytelling itself. The novel is comprised of a series of interconnected stories, each of which focuses on a particular aspect of the Vietnam War.

O’Brien tells how it is difficult to establish was is true from what isn’t true. In the Novel “The Things They

“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.

The soldiers during the war carried many things, most of them from back home. The first chapter of The Things They Carried starts out the book by showing how the things the soldiers carried. It also went into depth about the feelings and emotions they carried. After all, they were human, they carried feelings such as fear, grief, love, dignity, and terror. The things they carried reflected their personality, and what mattered in their lives back home.