The Role of Storytelling in The Things They Carried

In this essay, the author

• Explains the impact of the vietnam war on the soldiers who fought there. they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms, and were haunted by the atrocities of war. tim o'brien wrote the book "the things they carried."
• Analyzes how a soldier's heartbreak was when one of their friends was killed. they could not openly display their emotions because soldiers don't cry, so they created an outlet.
• Analyzes how lavender imagined himself barefoot on a beach in new jersey with martha, whose love for him he knows is entirely imagined, but to him feels real.
• Explains that lavender's death was hard because they knew he would be the first of many that would die too young, just like millions of other men had died during the war.
• Explains how the men in tim o'brien's platoon caught on quickly, expressing their grief without showing it. the death of kiowa was one of those impossible to get over.
• Explains that o'brien and norman bowker needed to tell their story to prove to themselves that they did all they could have done and in no way was kiowa’s death their fault.
• Explains that ptsd doesn't just come from having a near-death experience, but how personalized it is. all therapy comes down to the same idea: confront what happened.
• Opines that norman bowker never truly had someone to talk about the war. he wanted everyone to know what the soldiers went through in vietnam and he wanted to be able to do that through story telling.
• Explains that stories are for joining the past to the future, and for eternity, when memory is erased and there is nothing to remember.
• Analyzes how soldiers used stories to express their emotions to others and deal with their own emotions. the poet-veteran must remember the war and transform it into something worth remembering.
• Opines that rat kiley's facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around. when one listened to one of his stories, one would perform rapid calculations in their head.
• Opines that rat kiley was the one who believed that if he could tell anyone a story, they could learn something from him. he had been in vietnam the longest and wanted the new guys to understand the importance of listening to each other.
• Explains that story telling is a great escapism from all the events of war and allowed them to recount something pleasant from back home. henry dobbins and lieutenant cross stories didn't need to be real to get them through the hard days
• Narrates how the soldier's mind wandered and he would yell at his men to spread out in the column, but then slip away into daydreams, walking barefoot along the jersey shore, with martha, carrying nothing.
• Explains that even though cross didn't have a relationship with martha, it mattered to him and many other soldiers that they could have an escape from the war.
• Explains how o'brien's and his fellow solider, norman bowker, experienced very different transitions going back to peace time.
• Analyzes how the soldier had been there as a real soldier and had done all the things soldiers do. he could not bring himself to be uncommonly brave, and would have talked about the medal he didn't win.
• Narrates how norman created his own escape by speculating on what would happen if someone was listening and incorporating virtual strangers into his stories.
• Explains that they never spoke much about the war, but they had been talking about it virtually nonstop through their writing. telling stories seemed natural, inevitable process, like clearing the throat.
• Analyzes how o'brien began to question why he could only write down his stories instead of recounting them like so many others did.
• Explains that story telling was a life savor for many men trying to survive in and out of the war. however, telling stories to just themselves wasn't always enough for some, especially once they returned home.
• Cites bloom's guide: the things they carried, by robin bly, and martha brant. o'brien, tim.