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Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Tim O’Brien writes us a wonderful fictional tale of a platoon of men in vietnam during the vietnam war, The Things They Carried shows the reader that when the men are over in this distant and strange land, not only do they carry physical objects, but emotional baggage and ideas that truly make, or break a man in war. Tim and his men show several signs of stress and turmoil while fighting the war, and while they survive they begin to understand what is really means to live, die, and what is right, and wrong. While over in vietnam the men are in a war, not a simple skirmish or fight, but a full on war against an enemy that they were not sure they are the enemy. The men would walk from location from location seeing what there is to do and trying …show more content…

It was no longer living, but surviving the war. The men would march for days and hide in trenches and do things they were not proud of. The leaders are what kept them going, it was the only reason to keep going from town to town, village to village, killing men that may have been innocent. The men lose on of their own in a field from mortar fire. They stay there, and it is no place to stay, no place to survive. “Ten billion places we could've set up last night, the man picks a latrine." (O’Brien) The field was muck and shit, no other way to express what kind of life they endured while in …show more content…

Many mistakes had cost lives, and the platoon have had lost will from time to time. Two of the men of the same platoon had grown a friendship, that seemed to last forever. The men made a pact, that if one person was injured, the other would finish the other off. Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk. While humping along the trail Dave made a fatal mistake, and ended up blowing his leg off on a rigged mortar. Strunk had to make a decision to let his friend live or die. “ Later we heard that Strunk died somewhere over Chu Lai, which seemed to relieve Dave Jensen of an enormous weight.” (O'Brien) Lee Strunk no longer had the burden of Jensen's death and is both him feeling a blame of his death and knowing he did not suffer for his life; still keeping his promise to Dave

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