The soldiers of the Vietnam War were mostly innocent young men that were forced to face overwhelming emotional distress like the fear of their own deaths, guilt associated with taking the life of another soldier, and sorrow after witnessing their fellow comrades’ deaths. In The Things They Carried, author, Tim O’Brien, uses fictional stories to display the immense emotional burdens that the soldier Tim and his fellow members of Alpha Company experienced before, during, and after their unforgettably haunting time in Vietnam, and how each handled this “baggage” they carried. O’Brien’s sympathy belongs to the soldiers in the novel, knowing full and well that none of them belonged in the middle of the unjust war. Whether it was by the use of …show more content…
Each soldier had to individually find ways to cope with the loss of their comrades, whom were oftentimes their best friends. For Rat Kiley, the loss of his good friend Curt Lemon to a surprise booby trap is emotionally too much for him to handle. His grief leads him to writing a heartfelt letter to Curt’s sister in an attempt to continue some form of relationship with his deceased best friend. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, as the leader of Alpha Company, blames his own daydreaming and decision making for the deaths of Ted Lavender and Kiowa. The responsibility for Ted Lavender’s death that Jimmy Cross assumes generates a shame that he carries with him for the rest of his life “like a stone in his stomach.” A similar guiltiness is displayed by Norman Bowker, after he feels that his lack of courage resulted in the grotesque death of Kiowa. The feeling of not doing enough to save a friend haunts many war veterans. For Bowker, his inability to save Kiowa and other experiences of Vietnam left him directionless in his life after the war, ultimately leading to his suicide a few years down the road. Unlike Tim, who uses his ability to create stories that capture the complicated emotions of war to cope in his life back in America, Norman feels alone since he is unable to share his inner feelings from Vietnam that still haunt
Two years after he returned home from the war, he took his own life. The severe feeling of loneliness led Norman to feel as if there was nothing left for him. Soon after Norman returned from war, he drove around town in an endless loop. Wasting away his days, he noticed how the people of the town had changed while he was gone. “Most of Norman Bowker's friends were living in Des Moines or Sioux City, or going to school somewhere, or holding down jobs.
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was determined to find Kiowa’s body the morning after his death. Cross believed Kiowa was a fine soldier and human being and there was no way he would allow such a good man to be lost under the sewage . Jimmy Cross believed he had made a mistake setting up camp where he did, and felt sick about it (O’Brien, 2010, p.157). If Lieutenant Cross had not set up camp where he did he believed Kiowa could still be fighting with them and now held the responsibility to write a letter to
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.
Norman’s story is a way to help Tim portray the feeling that many veterans experienced when arriving home. Constantly, Norman reminisces of his mistake he feels he has made “the truth… is I let the guy go” (147).A feeling of emptiness, loss of motivation, regretfullness makes readjustment take a toll on a soldier’s mental health. Readers are able to grasp this feeling as if Norman’s chapter contains the whole truth, however, the mention of specific details allow for also seeing the addition behind
The Things They Carried details a young naive man’s life that changes after being drafted into the Vietnam War. The author Tim O’Brien shares with us the many tragedies that are engraved in his memory. Throughout the book he tells stories about the lives(right) of the dead. As he writes the stories, he dreams about the dead, so in his mind they are alive and have returned back into the world. The reader can feel the struggle that Tim has in relieving the pain of losing these people.
The book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien tells a thrilling stories of the vietnam war. The Things They Carried is a non linear book so it is a mix bag of stories at different times of O’brien’s life but they all relate back to the war in some way. O’ Brien used social obligation and shame and guilt to tell these stories.
Unlike Tim, after the war, Bowker never was able to find a place where he felt he was needed. It was almost as if everything he remembered before the war was the complete opposite. This accompanied with the fact that Bowker still felt guilt for not saving Kiowa's life made it impossible for Norman to find happiness post-war. Norman kept running situations through his head of how he could talk about the war to his family and old friends but all thought about telling them is how he wasn't "uncommonly brave" (135). Bowker's head kept circuling back to how he wished he would've saved Kiowa which killed his mental health.
Bowker was already apart of a burden that he did not want to be part of a larger one by leaving a suicide note. His biggest burden was Vietnam. He thought so often about the Vietnam days it was like he was still there and never going to leave. He was constantly living his life in circles because of
Jimmy constantly daydreams about a woman named Martha as he leads his squad through Vietnam. He loves this woman so much that he brings along a photo of her which he guards and that play around with a rock in his mouth, licking it and so forth as he daydreams about her even if his relationship with Martha is a fantasy. After one of the soldiers named Lavender is killed, Jimmy realizes that he has to perform his duty to lead his squad. He realizes that he cannot be in love while be in a war at the same time. It shows that even death can cause someone to change.
Tim O’Brien experienced this first hand when Leslie, a childhood friend died at the age of nine. At that time, O’Brien could not keep her off his mind. He realized that he loved her after she had died even though the both of them were still children. However, the effects of her death can be seen several decades later. When the war was over, O’Brien still looks back to his time with Linda “
Did you know during the Vietnam War a process known as the draft lottery was used to draft soldiers into the Vietnam War? Birthdays were randomly drawn and randomly assigned a number between 1 and 365. Men, ages 19 to 25, were drafted into the Vietnam War if their birthday fell within the 1 to 195 bracket. Tim O'Brien, the author of the novel "The Things They Carried" , illustrates his story about being drafted into the Vietnam Wart and his personal experience. The important themes O'Brien uses to help readers understand his personal experience fighting in the Vietnam War is the felling of guilt and love.
It can force soldiers to live with physical burdens like injuries that can negatively affect their quality of life. The experiences that soldiers encounter during the war can also drastically affect their lives. One example of this is the character Norman Bowker. Norman Bowker dealt with a couple of emotional burdens that affected his life after the war. One of these burdens was the guilt of his friend Kiowa’s death.
Disorganized. Lacking planning. Ineffective. Uninformed. These adjectives and those like it are often used to describe the strategy, or the lack thereof, present in the Vietnam War.
“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.
One event that seems to haunt him constantly is the death of his friend Kiowa. Years after the war, Norman continues to struggle with the images and atrocities of war. He even reaches out to O'Brien in a letter exclaiming, “the thing is,’ he wrote, ‘there’s no place to go. Not just in this lousy little town. In general.