Essay On The Things They Carried - 1058 Words

â€Å"The Things They Carried† provides a personal view into the minds of soldiers, and tells us the emotional and psychological costs of war. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is stationed in Vietnam in the middle of the war. He seems to be a man in love, or more like a man in love with the idea of a lady named Martha. He ends up changing from a love struck, blind man into a firm, leading soldier. In this story, the characters do the things they do because of desires and motivations. In â€Å"The Things They Carry,† Tim O’Brien underlines the setting, items that characters â€Å"humped† (O’Brien, 2009, pg. 3) or carried, and the characters themselves to set the theme. The story takes place during the Vietnam War, during what was supposed to be a†¦show more content†¦(O’Brien, 1990) In addition, all the men had steel helmets that weighed five pounds each. Tim O’Brien also includes the items and weight that each of the other soldie rs in Jimmy Cross’s platoon carries. Rat Kiley’s â€Å"canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry, including MM’s for especially bad wounds for a total weight of nearly eighteen pounds.† (O’Brien, 2009, pg. 5) Henry Dobbins carries a twenty-three-pound unloaded M-60 with approximately fifteen pounds of ammunition draped on his body. Henry Dobbins also carried â€Å"his girlfriend’s pantyhose wrapped around his neck as a comforter.† (O’Brien, 1990) Mitchell Sanders carried the Kiowa, an illustrated New Testament and condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of top-notch dope. Ted Lavender also carried tranquilizers and extra ammunition because â€Å"he was scared†. (O’Brien, 1990) All men have â€Å"to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier†. (O’Brien, 2009, pg. 3) Psychological burdens of war were just as real as the physical burdens of the soldiers. Those who were blessed enough to survive the war, struggle with confusion, anger, guilt, and lack of resolution. â€Å"They all carry ghosts†, (O’Brien, 1990) created by the fickleness of war including the â€Å"burden ofShow MoreRelated Things They Carried Essay: Strength in The Things They Carried980 Words   |  4 PagesStrength in The Things They Carried  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Everybody has to deal with adversity at some point in their lives. The adversity that they go through varies from person to person. For First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, he had to make it through the Vietnam War alive. In the short story, The Things They Carried, where Cross draws his strength from is somewhat unclear. He seems strong at the beginning of the story, but then again, he also seems to be gaining strength towards the end of the story. ThisRead More the things they carried Essay1091 Words   |  5 Pages The things they carried,by Tim Obrien nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;quot;Oh man, you fuckin trashed the fucker. You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like fuckin Shredded Wheat.quot; I chose to start off my essay with this particular exert from the book because I think that it very much represents the story in itself. Azar said this, after Tim (supposedly) killed a Vietnamese soldier with a hand grenade. It shows that in times of war, how callous men can becomeRead MoreEssay on The Things They Carried515 Words   |  3 PagesThe Things They Carried The Things They Carried, by Tim OBrien, is a generalization of his own experiences in Vietnam although the story itself is a work of fiction there is still much to be learned from it. Through the actions of soldiers in The Things They Carried we can begin to explore the effect war has on the human condition and the toll it plays on their minds. Some of the themes in the book, The Things They Carried, are bravery and what true bravery is, truth and how the manipulationRead MoreThe Things They Carried Essay1015 Words   |  5 PagesThe text, ‘The Things They Carried, is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lesseningRead MoreEssay On The Things They Carried1624 Words   |  7 PagesFor the seventeen Soldiers portrayed in â€Å"The Things We Carried† by Tim O’Brien, the physical pain was very minimal weight to carry compared to the emotional scars that they will carry throughout their entire life. This story does an amazing job portraying full human emotion that anyone put into a situation would feel, such as heavy guilt, sadness, anger, lack of motivation, perseverance, horror, and false security. All of these are notorious feelings that every soldier back in history, and now stillRead More The Things They Carried Essay2450 Words   |  10 Pagesand extremely prosperous. The 90’s were fraught with media propaganda about the economy and international relations. This media coverage made many Americans feel that they were invincible. The media never really covered the Middle East where things were about to boil over and hatred for the U.S. was about to get primetime attention. On the morning of September 11, 2001 the United States got a rude awakening to this hate that is held for our â€Å"invincible† country. This awakening came asRead More The Things They Carried Essay1107 Words   |  5 Pagesstory an example of this is Tim O’Brien’s â€Å"The Things They Carried†. As the story goes on it shows not only the literal meaning of what they carried but also symbolically the burdens that they had mentally. In the literal sense O’Brien talks about what different members of a platoon in Vietnam carried. This helps him to move to a more symbolic sense at the end of the story. He starts by talking about necessities and slowly moves on to what they carried to remind them that there was a world out sideRead MoreThe Things They Carried Essay1603 Words   |  7 PagesThe Things They Carried, every soldier carried something different; different equipment, different memories, and different guilt. Their equipment would change as they travelled through the book, but one common thing that the soldiers would all be forced to carry is the weight of losing one of their own. Though it might weight differently from man to man, changing depending on how well they knew the soldier, it is a weight they all felt. Though several soldiers died in The Things They Carried, theRead MoreThe Things They Carried Essay2626 Words   |  11 PagesAmerican History. During this time a lot of young people were a nti-war, they were sick of losing people they loved to violence. Though the war still needed to be fought so men became soldiers freely or because they were drafted. In the story â€Å"Things They Carried†, soldiers are faced head on with the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien shows how the men carry the weight of physical objects through out the war. The men bog themselves down with physical objects that they do not necessarily need yet, they can dropRead MoreThe Things They Carried Essay1838 Words   |  8 PagesChristian Hernandez Professor Sarah Cantrell English 1102 â€Å"The Things They Carried†: Emotional side The story of The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien gives a good outlook on how the Soldiers feel and think during the war . The story describes the different things that the soldiers carry with them while at war. O’Brien talks about the different items in great detail such as weight, color, shape and size but he also gives extraordinary details about not only their personalities