ipl-logo

Things They Carried Reflection

561 Words3 Pages

The Things They Carried is an interesting novel not like many others in that it is not one continuous story on a single plot line, but rather the novel is a collection of fictional short stories from a young soldier’s time stationed in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The stories do not follow a specific order either, and they often are set in different time periods, like how Chapters 1 (The Things They Carried), 2 (Love), and 3 (Spin) are set in the time period when the main character, Tim O’Brien, is deployed in Vietnam, while Chapter 4 (On the Rainy River) is set before the war started right after Tim was drafted, and tells the story of him trying to escape the war. The stories tell the reader the story of the differing backgrounds of many …show more content…

The short stories he writes center on the importance of companionship and friendship during war, which very well may be first hand accounts since O’Brien knows what it is like to actually be in a war. The stories are narrated by a character named Tim O’Brien, a character with a fictional past named after the author and modeled after his experiences. Tim begins the story by telling the reader what each soldier packs with them to help them ease anxiety or remember home while the group marches, which is inspiration for the title. In this beginning chapter, Tim introduces the reader to each character, and most of the characters introduced in this first chapter will have stories that are focused on them or that they appear in later on in the book. The first chapter will introduce the backstory of many of O’Brien’s closest friends during the war, young soldiers like Kiowa, Lieutenant Cross, and Mitchell Sanders. These are some of the characters that O’Brien grows a strong friendship with and they contribute to the main theme of the book, friendship, in that they help him through tough times and they all learn to care about one another. The Things They Carried is a great read that I would recommend to anyone who likes a good war story. However, the book is not great for someone who likes a storyline that follows

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    368 Words  | 2 Pages

    The book The Things They Carried was a book about a platoon of American Soldiers in the Vietnam War. Tim O'Brien wrote the book as the Author. Published on March 28 1990, with 233 pages. In the book the men had set up camp, which later found out to be a sink hole. The moltar started coming off the camp.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    1262 Words  | 6 Pages

    The Things They Carried-Tim O’Brien “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a collection of different short stories about American soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War. The book focuses on the turbulent period in the American history where the author narrates the stories with insight and compassion to reach out to the audience. It is almost a hallucinatory book because it is neither O’Brien’s memoir nor a short stories nor a novel but an artful of combination of all these three. In the book, O’Brian narrates his experience in the Vietnam War but majority of the stories are fictional. The main character in the book has similar life experience as O’Brien himself.

    Read More

  • Literary Standards In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

    833 Words  | 4 Pages

    Both a novel and a collection of interrelated short stories, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is a book that emerges from a complex variety of literary standards. O'Brien presents to his readers both a war journal and a writer's autobiography, and complicates this presentation by creating a fictional protagonist who shares his name. To fully comprehend and appreciate the novel, particularly the passages that gloss the nature of writing and storytelling, it is important to remember that the work is fictional rather than a conventional non-fiction, historical account. Protagonist "Tim O'Brien" is a middle-aged writer and Vietnam War veteran. The primary action of the novel is "O'Brien's" remembering the past and working and reworking the

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    1691 Words  | 7 Pages

    The Things They Carried is a book by Tim O’Brien, who appears as a character in this fictional book as a sort of self-insert in this fictional story. The book has 232 pages, and is divided into several unnumbered chapters. It was published in 1990 by Houghton Mufflin, and was printed in the USA. The story goes in a rather confusing and awkward order, rather than telling the story in a linear passage of time, each chapter takes place during a different part of O’Brien’s life. It’s written from O’Brien’s point of view many years after the Vietnam war.

    Read More

  • Coping Strategies In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

    2466 Words  | 10 Pages

    Coping strategies are crucial to the success of the Vietnam War troops. In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien conveys the experiences of War World Two soldiers, and the way soldiers cope through shifts of tone, setting, and character development. The Things They Carried, is multiple short stories put into one book that follows a group of soldiers told from the perspective of the narrator, who is also a character in the book during the time of War World One. The book is structured to reveal what the soldiers carry not just physically but also mentally.

    Read More

  • Love In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

    1234 Words  | 5 Pages

    In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, many of the characters’ thoughts stay centered around love. The Things They Carried is a collection of short stories based upon Tim O’Brien’s time in the Vietnam War. Throughout his writing, Tim explains the ups and downs of war, the feelings he and the other men felt, and the situations they found themselves in. He gives a very in depth look specifically on the idea of love during a time of war. The Things They Carried demonstrates the power love has over the thoughts and actions of the people in its stories.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    1213 Words  | 5 Pages

    Tim O’Brien’s "The Things They Carried" is a short story that explores the experiences of soldiers during the Vietnam War. The story depicts the physical and emotional weight that soldiers carry with them during the war, highlighting the challenges that soldiers face both on and off the battlefield. Through the items that the soldiers carry with them, the story reveals the emotional and physical burdens of war and the masking of emotions because of masculine identity. The story begins with a list of items that the soldiers carry with them, ranging from physical items such as guns and ammunition to intangible items such as fear and guilt.

    Read More

  • Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: Chapter Analysis

    1176 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Things They Carried was written by Tim O'Brien and he writes about the stories he remembers relating to the time he spent in the Vietnam War as well as how he feels about other stories from the War. The stories that O’Brien writes are about the fate of all the soldiers he served with and how their lives are after the war. Most of the stories that he writes are strange and he changes the point of view in which each chapter is written. To a large extent, the narrator's closeness to, or being a part of the story leads to the readers being persuaded of the realism within the story. Specifically, in “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” and “Spin”, the use of first person and the author inputting his emotions makes the reader think that the events

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    704 Words  | 3 Pages

    Through his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien reveals the importance of storytelling in conveying the truth, emphasizing the power of imagination in recounting the stories of the Vietnam War. The novel The Things They Carried is about the Vietnam war. The Vietnam war took place from the 50s through the middle of the 70s. Tim O'Brien demonstrates the truth in storytelling in The Things They Carried by emphasizing the power of imagination in the process of recounting stories of the Vietnam War. The Things They Carried is a powerful story of the mental and physical burdens of soldiers during the Vietnam War.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried Journal Analysis

    1946 Words  | 8 Pages

    Entry 1 In the first chapter titled “The Things They Carried,” the author said that they carried the physical items like ponchos and ammunition, but what resonated with me was how he described the intangible things that each of them carried. They carry the life that they left back in the United States. I can’t imagine what it would be like to leave the life that’s lived for eighteen years to fight for something that’s not even clearly understood.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried Literary Analysis

    1178 Words  | 5 Pages

    A lot happens in Tim O 'Brien short story "The Things They Carried", at first, the reader speculates what the short story is about and why it is called "The Things They Carried". The narrator Tim O 'Brien tells and describes all the things that the men have to carry while "in-country" during the Vietnam War in the1960 's. The text 's artistic value comes from its plot, characters, conflict, and style. In the plot of the story the protagonist, Tim O 'Brien starts by describing circumstances that happened while he was in Vietnam. In the beginning of "The Things They Carried" we are introduced to each character by the things they carry.

    Read More

  • Reflective Essay: The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    747 Words  | 3 Pages

    Synthesis Essay In the Vietnam war, there were many soldiers at war with each other, and most soldiers were not prepared for the fight. In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien was in the Vietnam war when he was young. The book was not in order but he still talks about his experiences while in the war. His purpose for writing this novel was because he wanted younger audience to know what happened in the war and what the soldiers experienced.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried: An Analysis

    688 Words  | 3 Pages

    “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.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On The Things They Carried

    1071 Words  | 5 Pages

    Originally published in 1990, The Things They Carried is a collection of war stories that took place during the Vietnam War. Due to its accurate and honest depiction of war, it has been banned for crude language, violence, drug use, and sexual innuendo. The author, Tim O’Brien, was born in Austin, Minnesota in 1946. Due to his service in the United States military during the Vietnam War, O’Brien is able to depict the war in a more graphic, and realistic manner.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    1757 Words  | 8 Pages

    War is one of the most complex yet completely understood subjects to read or write about. Tim O’Brien has captured the true essence of being drafted into a war. “The Things They Carried” is a novel composed of multiple short stories; Each taking the reader through the perspective of the narrator showing his multiple landscapes, situations, and changing feelings from being drafted into the Vietnam War to surviving it. These stories really help one understand the effects of war on someone’s mind as well as body. Tim O’Brien is the main character and protagonist in this novel.

    Read More

More about Things They Carried Reflection

Open Document