Things They Carried
Essays

The Soldier's Psychological and Physical Scars from the Vietnam War

Tim O'Brien uses repetition to illustrate the theme of carrying things in his short story. By constantly repeating phrases and subject matter, the author reinforces the notion that it was severely straining to engage in the Vietnam War. The relationship between a lieutenant and one of his fallen soldiers exemplifies this concept.

¶ … Things They Carried: In search of a 'true' war story through fiction

¶ … Things They Carried: Symbolism and Comparative Analysis

This essay reviews two Chapters from the book The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried," and "In the Field." The paper explores the lives and feelings of the characters in the story as they are shaped by war. Guilt and blame are examined in the context of the Vietnam War and connected with modern events in the Middle East.

¶ … Things They Carried is known as the novel and also as a book containing stories which are interrelated to each other. Written by Tim O'Brien, the book is considered to be a book representing complex ideas and…

Tim O'Brian's novel "The Things They Carried" presents readers with a first-person account involving incidents from the Vietnam War. The book can to a certain extent considered to be autobiographical, in spite of the…

Tim O'Brien's the Things They Carried, while presented as such, is not a true war story but a post-war story. The narrator intimates this himself, in a moment of suspicious candor, when he relates that the chapter…

Tim O'Brien's 1990 collection of war stories "The Things They Carried" is focused on putting across a realistic image of warfare as seen from a first-person perspective. Even with the fact that the writer obviously wants readers to be severely influenced as a result of reading the book, he does not hesitate to introduce fictional passages in an attempt to make it easier for someone to read the book. It actually appears that O'Brien sees romanticism in a place where most people fail to see it and wants to take advantage of the fact that he is basically writing a historical account. This demonstrates that he considers that it would be impossible for someone to express an objective opinion concerning warfare as long as the respective individual experienced it directly.

Mary Anne is significant to the novel because O'Brien demonstrates how the war impacts more than soliders. In the "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," Mary Anne is the epitome of the all- American girl.