Essay On The Things They Carried - 1456 Words

â€Å"The Things They Carried† by Tim O’Brien is a short novel written about the American soldiers in the Vietnam War. The title carries two meanings; duties and equipment for the war and the emotional sorrows the soldiers were put through while at war. O’Brien discussed about the character’s wants and needs and that the constant worry of death was just a few of the emotional baggage they carried. War is never an easy thing to talk about, epically those who were involved. During the Vietnam War, being a soldier wasn’t easy. Soldiers always see death, whether it be another soldier or an enemy. In â€Å"The Things They Carried,† Tim O’Brien explores the motivation of solders in the Vietnam War to understand their role in combat, accepting the death†¦show more content†¦All of the men in the platoon carried sentimental items. Some carried good luck items and some just souvenirs from their tour. For example, Jimmy Cross carried picture, pebbles, and letters from a girl that didn’t love him like he wanted. Kiowa carried a bible. Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriend’s panty-hose around his neck. Norman Bowker carried a thumb from a corpse that was given to him by Mitchell Sanders. Towards the end of the story Lieutenant Cross realizes he is not doing his job well if he is thinking about Martha. In the passage, it writes, â€Å"He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of war.† (O’Brien, 1990, p.621). O’Brien reinforce that after Lavender is shot, Cross decides that he is going to straighten up and be the leader he should have been all along. Cross blames himself for Lavender’s death. Shortly after Lavender’s death, Cross immediately talk about his new expectations. Accepting the death of a fellow soldier i s a very important process during war. In a war, death is almost as common as breathing. After Lavender is shot the men burn the city of Than Khe. The loss of their comrade makes then angry and they totally demolish the city. They smoke the rest of Lavender’s dope and wait for the plane to take him away. The platoon talks about the soldiers they hear aboutShow MoreRelated Things They Carried Essay: Strength in The Things They Carried980 Words   |  4 PagesStrength in The Things They Carried  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Everybody has to deal with adversity at some point in their lives. The adversity that they go through varies from person to person. For First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, he had to make it through the Vietnam War alive. In the short story, The Things They Carried, where Cross draws his strength from is somewhat unclear. He seems strong at the beginning of the story, but then again, he also seems to be gaining strength towards the end of the story. ThisRead More the things they carried Essay1091 Words   |  5 Pages The things they carried,by Tim Obrien nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;quot;Oh man, you fuckin trashed the fucker. You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like fuckin Shredded Wheat.quot; I chose to start off my essay with this particular exert from the book because I think that it very much represents the story in itself. Azar said this, after Tim (supposedly) killed a Vietnamese soldier with a hand grenade. It shows that in times of war, how callous men can becomeRead MoreEssay on The Things They Carried515 Words   |  3 PagesThe Things They Carried The Things They Carried, by Tim OBrien, is a generalization of his own experiences in Vietnam although the story itself is a work of fiction there is still much to be learned from it. Through the actions of soldiers in The Things They Carried we can begin to explore the effect war has on the human condition and the toll it plays on their minds. Some of the themes in the book, The Things They Carried, are bravery and what true bravery is, truth and how the manipulationRead MoreThe Things They Carried Essay1015 Words   |  5 PagesThe text, ‘The Things They Carried, is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lesseningRead MoreEssay On The Things They Carried1624 Words   |  7 PagesFor the seventeen Soldiers portrayed in â€Å"The Things We Carried† by Tim O’Brien, the physical pain was very minimal weight to carry compared to the emotional scars that they will carry throughout their entire life. This story does an amazing job portraying full human emotion that anyone put into a situation would feel, such as heavy guilt, sadness, anger, lack of motivation, perseverance, horror, and false security. All of these are notorious feelings that every soldier back in history, and now stillRead More The Things They Carried Essay2450 Words   |  10 Pagesand extremely prosperous. The 90’s were fraught with media propaganda about the economy and international relations. This media coverage made many Americans feel that they were invincible. The media never really covered the Middle East where things were about to boil over and hatred for the U.S. was about to get primetime attention. On the morning of September 11, 2001 the United States got a rude awakening to this hate that is held for our â€Å"invincible† country. This awakening came asRead More The Things They Carried Essay1107 Words   |  5 Pagesstory an example of this is Tim O’Brien’s â€Å"The Things They Carried†. As the story goes on it shows not only the literal meaning of what they carried but also symbolically the burdens that they had mentally. In the literal sense O’Brien talks about what different members of a platoon in Vietnam carried. This helps him to move to a more symbolic sense at the end of the story. He starts by talking about necessities and slowly moves on to what they carried to remind them that there was a world out sideRead MoreEssay On The Things They Carried1058 Words   |  5 Pages â€Å"The Things They Carried† provides a personal view into the minds of soldiers, and tells us the emotional and psychological costs of war. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is stationed in Vietnam in the middle of the war. He seems to be a man in love, or more like a man in love with the idea of a lady named Martha. He ends up changing from a love struck, blind man into a firm, leading soldier. In this story, the characters do the things they do because of desires and motivations. In â€Å"The ThingsRead MoreThe Things They Carried Essay1603 Words   |  7 PagesThe Things They Carried, every soldier carried something different; different equipment, different memories, and different guilt. Their equipment would change as they travelled through the book, but one common thing that the soldiers would all be forced to carry is the weight of losing one of their own. Though it might weight differently from man to man, changing depending on how well they knew the soldier, it is a weight they all felt. Though several soldiers died in The Things They Carried, theRead MoreThe Things They Carried Essay2626 Words   |  11 PagesAmerican History. During this time a lot of young people were anti-war, they were sick of losing people they loved to violence. Though the war still needed to be fought so men became soldiers freely or because they were drafted. In the story â€Å"Things They Carried†, soldiers are faced head on with the Vietnam War. Tim O’Br ien shows how the men carry the weight of physical objects through out the war. The men bog themselves down with physical objects that they do not necessarily need yet, they can drop