Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Words: 1436
Pages: 6

Have you ever heard a story that was about some kind of violence or stupid decision, but days or months, or years later you actually understood what it was about? A quick example is when you hear that someone who had beautiful hair, shaved it and people think that this person was just impulsive in his decision or stupid, but in fact he did this because he loved someone else whose hair was on its last roots. An all-time favorite author of many, did the exact same thing. He turned a couple of war stories into a love story. The geniuses’ name is Tim O’Brien. He wrote The Things They Carried, which is a war novel that talks about the author’s experiences in the heart of Vietnam. However, the idea that the book has is to not only tell people how …show more content…
Even though society nowadays is becoming more and more tolerant towards relationships between people of the same gender, we still are more used to the traditional love between the man and the woman. This is one of the central themes in the first chapter of the book because readers realize that in these times of war, love is what keeps soldiers motivated to go through the hard times, “To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps” (O’Brien 3). You can see that nothing was easy during these times as you couldn’t just carry love, but you had to ‘hump it’ through all the obstacles that are represented by the ‘hills’ and ‘swamps’ and this is why it was worth it. What’s most important is that the soldiers carried their love for the people back home, which was their initial motivation since they didn’t know anything about anyone they were going to fight alongside with, “First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha.More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her” (O’Brien