Summary Of Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

The Things they carried is a novel set in Vietnam during the twenty year war. The beginning of the book is opens with the description of an experience the author had in Vietnam. He is part of a troop called Alpha Company. The things they carried is called that because throughout the book the reader is shown what the soldiers carried, physical and mental. They carry the physically loads on their backs but also the emotional load that comes with fighting in a war. Most of all they carry the weight of their reputations. Tward the beginning of the novel Ted Lavender a low ranking soldier is introduced. He deals with anxiety and takes tranquilizers, and smokes pot to deal with it. He eventually gets killed on his way back from going to the bathroom. …show more content…
Just like everyone else he wasn't, and we come to find out how brave he really is when he opens the draft letter. Curt Lemon is another soldier who dies in the war by an exploding mortar. The author talks about how he was scared of the dentist and thought of dentistry as a torture technique. The author tells a tale about how when they had to attend a routine checkup in the war Lemon fainted before he even got in the chair. In The Things They Carried the author tells you these little vignettes and brings you closer to each character and then cuts you deep when each one gets killed off. He does this maybe so that the reader has some way of empathizing with him and his experiences. On of the little stories is actually after the war, twenties years infact in his forties living in Massachusetts. The author describes his feelings of immense guilt. He thinks that the deaths of his friends were his fault and he could have done something to save them. He atones for his guilt by writing two books: “The Man I Killed” and “Ambush”. In the very last story :”Lives Of The Dead”, he expresses his belief that stories are part of evolution and have the power to save …show more content…
The war took him in as a young scared man afraid of the shame that not joining the war would bring him. At the end the war spits him out a guilt ridden middle aged man who tell stories to cope with his inner torment. The author lets the reader go inside his mind and experience the war from a first person perspective like you as the reader are really there. At times the author's writing fades into a sort of third person omniscient. This allows the reader to see from different perspectives while witnessing the way the war turns ordinary men into soldiers who mindlessly commit such terrible atrocities so easily. The author really uses storytelling as a way of coming to terms with the unspeakable things he saw. In specific there are three major characters: Kiowa, Mitchell Sanders, and Jimmy cross. Jimmy Cross’s character shows you what happens when you place a lot of responsibility in someone who is immature. In the beginning the only reason he signs up for the marines is because his friends are doing it and he wants to fit in. He doesn't care about the war and the result is that when he gets in the thick of it he doesn't know what or why he's doing what he's doing. He sends letters and photographs back in forth to his lover Martha, and it later becomes apparent that he loves her and cares more about her

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