The Things They Carried

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Recommended: Steven Kaplan, Essay on O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"

The Things They Carried The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is a captivating recitation in which Tim O'Brien maintains that all the stories featured in the entire book are indeed true stories. Tim is the protagonist as well as the narrator of this particular story and it is the experiences that he had regarding war that have drove him to write the this story. The book gives a clear depiction of the war in Vietnam by showing the horrors of war but there have been varying views regarding the question of whether the book is an antiwar or not. As a result, the purpose of this paper is to address this particular issue by addressing different views in regard to whether the book is an anti-war on not and this will be supported by specific incidences and arguments as featured in The Things They Carried (Kock 45). The book is clearly an anti-war according to most of the proponents. The illusory version that the narrator, O’Brien, puts in writing regarding his imagination as a fighter in World War II, depicts him as not exclusively a peace lover. However, hostility in Vietnam appeared erroneous. The character does not have the proper audacity to flee to Canada. It is in this regard that The Things They Carried can be seen as a clear-cut calamity whose major fault a rather likeable protagonist being the cause of his demise (Kock 115). It is in this line that all the horrors addressed in the book such as killing, losing friends through being slay, boredom interspersed by terror following such a decision. The description of the tangible and non-tangible items in the story is prove enough that this is an antiwar story. In the story the narrator addresses the things that the soldiers carried and these were both tangible and int... ... middle of paper ... ...ead with them of avoiding it based on the stipulated reasons why it is not a good thing. The story The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is indeed an antiwar and any opposing view on the basis of the description of the Things that the Soldiers carried during war is no prove enough that this promotes violence in any way (Smith 123). Works Cited O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1990. Kock, Phillip. The Depiction of Violence and the Soldier's everyday life in Michael Herr's"Dispatches" and Tim O'Brien's"The Things they carried". Munchen: GRIN Verlag, 2010. Smith, Patrick. Tim O'Brien: a critical companion. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005. Kirszner, Laurie. & Mandel, Stephen. Fiction: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Paulinas, 1994.

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