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The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien
Tim O’Brien’s interview. “The things they carried”.
Ryan Magee:
Rapid escalation of the Vietnam war during John F Kennedy’s administration.
Encyclopedia Britannica:
U.S. President Richard M. Nixon agrees to end the Vietnamese war.
Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.:
Analysis and summary of “The Things They Carried”.
Minute Book Reports YouTube:
Dang Thuy Tram’s diary. A Vietnamese doctor who shared her selfless acts during the Vietnam War.
Encyclopedia Britannica:
Creepy things that were “normal” in the Vietnam war.
-Nutty History on YouTube
Summary
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William Timothy O’Brien, or better known as Tim O’Brien, is an American Novelist.
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He was born an only child in Austin Minnesota on October 1st, 1946 (During the post-World War II baby boom era). He was raised in Worthington, Minnesota by parents who served and met in the navy during World War II.
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Before he got drafted in 1968, he graduated Summa Cum Laude from Macalester College in 1968 and worked a summer job at a meat packing plant. He was part of Phi Beta Kappa, he was the president of his student body, and got a full ride scholarship for grad studies in Harvard.
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He served in Vietnam from 1969-1970.
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After his tour, O’Brien resumed his schooling at Harvard, studying political and government science.
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In 1974, he briefly worked for the New York Times, and later began publishing periodically his works in other mediums like The New Yorker and Playboy. Tim first published his work in 1973, which was a book called “If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home”
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He published a short story of the first vignette or chapter of “The Things They Carried” in 1987. This Vignette received much recognition like the 1987 National Magazine Award in Fiction and its selection in the 1987 Best American Short Stories competition.
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O’Brien published the full novel of “The Things They Carried” in 1990, which was loved everywhere and received awards
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In 2001 he married his wife Meredith Beaker, they had their first son Timmy in 2003, and their last son Tad in 2005.
Historical Background
If it was not evident as you read the book “The Things They Carried,” a predominant amount of the book takes place while Tim O’Brien fights in the Vietnam War. War is not only a crucial factor for which the book was written but it also ceases the glorification of battle. The United States' involvement increased with over a million Americans having been deployed by 1967. The characters of the novel were in the war roughly around 1967 to 1971. However, the Vietnam war took place in the years 1955 to 1975. Much like the author, the public also strongly disagreed with the war which led to both peaceful and violent protests to bring the troops home. The reason for this strong hatred is that it defied people’s moral beliefs and killed various innocent people, like those who perished in the My Lai Massacre. In summary, this war was initially fought to protect and support the French but was later fought to “prevent Vietnam from becoming a communistic foothold” (Colella). This led to many poignant citizens due to the estimated 60,000 men who perished in service.
Author's Biogrpahy
Visual Atrocities of the War
Videos
Themes
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Motivational shame
Tim O’Brien is motivated to go to war by the fear he felt of being shamed by his community for being a coward.
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Storytelling
Tim O’Brien was able to convey his own war experiences through the novel. Storytelling helped O’Brien provide the reader with a chance to experience emotions that you wouldn’t normally feel unless you endured war.
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The power of friendship
Friendship in a war is crucial because soldiers support each other in a way that others might not be able to do it . Kiowa, a friend of O’Brien, was able to guide Tim O’Brien out of his distress after killing an innocent man on the battlefield.
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War is pointless and unnecessary
The characters in the story do not have a clear understanding as to why they are being sent to war. War is pointless, and there is not a reason as to why the American soldiers are fighting.
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The power that death holds
Death is a major part of the book. Storytelling is the only way to keep those who are dead, alive. No one is death until they are forgotten. Many of the soldiers and people who were related to the characters were kept alive by their stories in the book.
Amanda's Passage of choice
Tim O’brien uses various literary techniques to convey tone in this excerpt, importance, responsibility, and a redundant cycle that they endured. Some of the techniques used are idioms, hyperboles, metaphors, similes, syntax, and alliteration. The use of idioms impacts the story because it adds meaning to the text and although they do not carry the land, they do carry the burden of the war and the Vietnam land with them. Some similes include the soldiers marching compared to the movements of mules. The word mule has the reputation of slow, sluggish, and unintelligent therefore it is said that the movements are “slow and dumb” (14). The metaphor in which it says that the soldiers carried the atmosphere, and the humidity is a way of expressing that they always carry those vivid emotions with them. Syntax influences the excerpts fluency by adding various short sentences then adding long and detailed sentences. This is intentional in the way that some details should not be given much attention in comparison to others. In addition, alliteration is seen on page 13 when O’Brien chooses to repeatedly use the letter S to describe the supplies that the soldiers carried. All these methods of literary devices convey the message and type of author that Kurt O’Brien was. This excerpt from the book “The Things They Carried” is crucial to the plot of the book because it emphasizes the physical, metaphorical, and emotional things that the soldiers carried with them. The introduction towards what the soldiers physically carry shows the type of personalities and priorities that these young men had. However, these soldiers arrived not only with physical baggage but emotional baggage as well. Take the example of Rat Kylie who physically carried M&Ms, but towards the end of the book carries an overbearing weight of ghosts and memories that he commits suicide. Therefore, this paragraph shows that they did not just carry weapons and “their own lives” but they also “carried the land itself…the sky…the atmosphere…and each other at times...never allowing for someone to be at loss of things to carry” (O’Brien 14,15).
Andy's Passage of choice
In this paragraph, the reader is shown the author's personal view of him receiving his draft letter. It is demonstrated that Tim does not see himself as a soldier because he lacks the necessary qualities. This allows the reader to see how in the war, many freshly turned eighteen-year-olds were stripped from their home to become something they were not. In O’Brien’s story, this doubt about being a soldier can be contrasted with the rest of the book, where he is fighting a war, killing men, and getting his hands dirty. War is shown to be unfair; which can be represented in this story when Tim, president of his student body and a student with a scholarship to Harvard, is informed that he must leave his home and fight in a war he does not believe in. This paragraph not only adds a sense of understanding of how cruel war can be to young adults but also shows how Tim feels about war. It is revealed that he thinks that war should be fought for the people who support it and not by intelligent individuals who have bright futures ahead of them. He is shown referencing soldiers fighting in Vietnam as “dumb jimbos” or as “back-to-the-stone-age hawks.” In the grand picture of the book, the paragraph adds depth to the story by allowing the reader to acknowledge, while they are reading, that the spoilers shown could have been valedictorians, brothers, or sons but lost the chance to live their lives fully because the government took that chance away from them.
Mia's Passage of choice
Darkness forces the soldiers to become frightened. In the dark, those who were dead will rise from the death and appear as ghosts. But only in the dark is where this ghosts are capable of scaring people because in the daylight nobody can be scared. The darkness makes the people think because there is nothing to get distracted from. They are isolated with only their thoughts being a companion. The brain eventually pushes the people to become cowards because they create imaginary creatures that only come out in the dark when there is no one around. Things that might seem impossible to exist in the daylight become true in the dark. The brain plays tricks on people, it gives life to the people who are dead.
Gael's Passage of choice
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Music
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Gimme Shelter is a song about political and social unrest during the Vietnam War and the serial killer Charles Manson.
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-rolling-stones/gimme-shelter
Soldiers who who have been killed in action were not able to have their body found when the war was over
The song is about how the fathers went into the Vietnam war, and some died in action, leaving the mothers alone to take care of the family. Kids 18 years old would go into battle and make the parents worry about their children not coming back home.
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/creedence-clearwater-revival/fortunate-son
The song is about how many men it would take to stop this war and how many children they have to kill to stop this madness.
This song spoke out against the war in Vietnam, but was supportive of the soldiers fighting there. Like many CCR fans, most of the soldiers came from the working class and were there because they didn't have connections that could get them out. The song is sung from the perspective of one of these men, who ends up fighting because he is not a "senator's son."
The Things They Carried: The Movie!
Our podcast opinion
The Things They Carried part 1
The Things They Carried part 2
Works Cited
Historical Background:
www.britannica.com/biography/Tim-OBrien.
www.famousauthors.org/tim-obrien.
www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-things-they-carried/tim-obrien-biography.
Author Biography:
Spector, Ronald H.. "Vietnam War". Encyclopedia Britannica, 13 Mar. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/event/Vietnam-War. Accessed 22 June 2022.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Vietnam War Timeline". Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Oct. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/summary/Vietnam-War-Timeline. Accessed 22 June 2022.
Colella, Jill. CliffsNotes on The Things They Carried. 22 Jun 2022
<https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-things-they-carried/book-summary>