O'Brien's repeated use of the phrase "they carried" attempts to create a realization in the reader that soldiers in wars always carry some kind of weight; there is always some type of burden that servicemen and women will forever hold onto both throughout the war and long after it has finished. The specification of what the soldier bear shows that the heaviness is both physical and emotional and in most cases the concrete objects carried manifest into the continued emotional distress that lasts a lifetime (sentence about what they carry from novel) "The Things They Carried" emphasis this certain phrase in order for those that do not have the experience of going to understand the constant pressure of burdens they are under. O'Brien draws on
Throughout the story, the author goes into great detail about the heavy physical loads that the soldiers had to carry with them. Even the way O’Brien describes the many loads seems to grab your attention on the extreme conditions these men had to go through just to survive another day. The most interesting thing I found while reading this story is that even though the soldiers carried a ton of weight around with them, they insisted on carrying as much as possible to insist they were prepared for any given situation. Also, just as we are all different individuals, each soldier carried their own personal things that depended on their own habits and hobbies. Some examples of the necessities the soldiers had to carry with them include, “Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pockets knives, heat tabs, wrist-watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C-rations, and two or three canteens of water (O’Brien 125). These were just some of the things these men had to carry with them just to undergo some of the conditions surrounding them. Besides those items I explained things like weapons and magazines made up most of the majority of the weight. What really shocked me at this point is that with all this weight the soldiers had to carry with them, they were expected to be very mobile and able to haul around everything for miles at a time. The only benefit I could possible see coming out of all the things they carried is the protection the backpack gave the soldiers from the spraying of bullets during battle. Other than that, the more the men carried, the more their moral went down under those conditions. I think that the author brilliantly described this story. It was almost like I felt my backpack getting heavier as I was reading on and the items kept increasing. Towards the end of the story I kind of felt just as the soldiers did, weighed down and dead tired.
...often times tragic and can ruin the lives of those who fight. The effects of war can last for years, possibly even for the rest of the soldiers life and can also have an effect on those in the lives of the soldier as well. Soldiers carry the memories of things they saw and did during war with them as they try and regain their former lives once the war is over, which is often a difficult task. O’Brien gives his readers some insight into what goes on in the mind of a soldier during combat and long after coming home.
... encountered; it is almost as a memoir to make the novel more cope able. A physical and emotional burden carried by a platoon from the war. Things everyone carries, tells many things about once person, the book inclines more into an emotional and spiritual through one’s life, especially a changing one as a soldier would experience it. O’Brien Stories goes beyond the war; it goes more in depth of each event, each character, and each place, as a diary to write out everything to cope with the experience, wondering someone else will read it. Tim O’Brien let his imagination flow; he wanted to integrate his own stories, along with stories that were close to him. At last it doesn’t matter if it’s fictional, or not, it is a part of him in every chapter of The Things They Carried, that he chose to share with each reader
The authors prove through their writing that war can be unfair. For example, Tim Meeker, the narrator asks,”Jerry? He is dead?” While his mom replies,”Nobody understands it. They put him on a prison ship, and he got sick and he died within three weeks” (Collier and Collier 166). Tim, presumably about twelve, had his best friend Jerry
Each soldiers experience in the war was devastating in its own way. The men would go home carrying the pictures and memories of their dead companions, as well as the enemy soldiers they killed. “They all carried emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” These were the things that weighed the most, the burdens that the men wanted to put down the most, but were the things that they would forever carry, they would never find relief from the emotional baggage no matter where they went.
Tim O’Brien uses the description of the items the soldiers brought with them to provide better characterization for each man. O’Brien always mentions the exact weight of the items the soldiers carried. This makes the reader feel the load of the soldiers. The first types of items that are mentioned in the story are physical items. These i...
Throughout the seminar discussion various topics were addressed, but the argument students came back to the most dealt with the characters in the war and their experiences throughout the novel, more specifically, the negative effects the war had inflicted on them. Tim O’Brien’s argument in the novel was simply that war brings out the worst in people. O’Brien makes this argument clear through his usage of metaphors, imagery, and symbolism all as he builds up his complex characters throughout the novel.
As the war continued, they moved from town to town, they lost comrades and they killed other people. They kept themselves in right conditions, to not breakdown as the more fear of death had taken their hope away. They knew none of them could show their weakness, because if one person went down, others would have been down. They had to support each other against their enemy, the fear of
...O'Brien goes beyond the telling of war stories in The Things They Carried to say something larger about the art and purpose of story-telling. Contrasting truth and fiction, O'Brien shows that the truth cannot always communicate human emotion. O'Brien's personal guilt at seeing a man die from a grenade blast is real, and must be communicated as such in a story. Norman Bowker's guilt at seeing Kiowa sink into the muck leaves him with a sense of direct personal failure. By incorporating this sense of failure into fictional events, O'Brien is able to communicate the true human emotion behind the story, rather than just the facts. Above and beyond a simple set of war stories, The Things They Carried reduces fiction to the very heart of why stories are told the way they are.
Another unique aspect to this book is the constant change in point of view. This change in point of view emphasizes the disorder associated with war. At some points during the book, it is a first person point of view, and at other times it changes to an outside third person point of view. In the first chapter of the book, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien writes, “The things they carried were largely determined by necessity (2).
In the beginning of the book two students had gone to visit their friend who had lost his leg. Not only was this war traumatizing for the soldiers but the family and friends of them too. The war was a painful experience for everyone ruining many people's lives. When Kemmerich was injured he was greatly agonized,the battle never really ended for him. He had pains in his foot, but he was more worried about his watch. Another example of physical injury is when the soldiers were in the trenches and a shell fell in the trench, this wounded or even killed many soldier. The war was so bad many soldiers would shoot themselves in the foot just to go home and escape the
One of the most significant ways for O’Brien to relate his war experience through the reader is to embellish the truth of the story. By doing this, O’Brien is able to add dialog between characters, spark interest to the reader, and add personality to the book. O’Brien’s purpose for writing false information from true events is because O’Brien doesn’t want the book to be just factual information. In this way, the factual information in any war story can be unrelatable to the reader. The fiction aspect of the novel makes it more appealing and understanding to the reader. “But listen. Even that story is made up. I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” (O’Brien, pg. 171) Through this statement, O’Brien discuss how he uses fiction to help to reader understand his emotions. For the intention of connection O’Brien’s perspective to the reader, he utilizes the genre of autobiographical
...otional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight" (“Carried” 23). O’Brien showed the effect that emotional longings have on one’s thoughts & feelings. Though he tells that his novel is about story-truth, which is not about war and do not have a moral; but one can understand that O’Brien’s fiction is a message against forcing young people into war. By true-made up stories; the author shows the transformation of one’s emotional state through war and its long-lasting impact. O’Brien’s stories prove that seen physical burdens emphasize the unseen emotional burden: physical burden can be expressed in words, but emotional burden, changes that are encouraged by our surroundings cannot be expressed in words- thus they always remain untrue yet true.
A soldier is always carrying a ton of stress, whether it is a physical strain or a mental one. The constant burden of weight being on a soldier 's shoulders is enough to break a man. In the story "The Things They Carried" by author Tim O 'Brien he writes constantly about the weight of the objects they carried with them during the Vietnam war, and at the same time explains things that caused the mental strain that they all carried. In the story the narrator describes the underlying grief all the characters experienced after one of their squad mates was shot while walking back to the campsite. It may not be spoken of at times, but even the characters themselves allude to going through different phases of grief, such as giving up the drugs or when Lt. Cross burned the photos. Soldiers were not just subject to grief America was hurting at the time with all the riots, protest, and families coping with their sons being sent off to war. In the movie Letters Home from Vietnam, a letter was left at the Vietnam memorial of a grieving mother who had lost her son, who was killed in a firefight. She goes on throughout the letter hearing of all the things he had done while in Vietnam, and how he was one of the few that didn 't change while being there. Grief effects everyone in different ways but it will always be a reoccurring theme when it comes to