The things they carried pages. The Things They Carried Study Guide 2023-01-02
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The Things They Carried is a collection of interconnected short stories by Tim O'Brien, set during the Vietnam War. The title refers to the various physical and emotional items that the soldiers carry with them during the war. These items range from practical military equipment to personal mementos and memories.
One of the central themes of The Things They Carried is the weight of memory and the impact of war on the individual soldiers. The soldiers carry a wide range of personal items that serve as reminders of their past lives and loved ones, such as photographs, letters, and mementos. These items provide comfort and serve as a connection to the world they left behind, but they also carry a heavy emotional weight. The soldiers are constantly reminded of the sacrifices they have made and the dangers they face, and these memories weigh on them both literally and figuratively.
Another important theme in The Things They Carried is the concept of masculinity and how it is shaped by war. The soldiers are expected to embody traditional masculine traits such as strength, bravery, and stoicism, and they struggle with the realities of war that challenge these expectations. Many of the soldiers cope with their fears and emotions by resorting to macho posturing and bravado, but this facade often crumbles when faced with the harsh realities of combat.
The Things They Carried also explores the complex relationships between the soldiers, who rely on each other for support and companionship during their time in Vietnam. The soldiers form strong bonds with each other, but they also struggle with feelings of jealousy, resentment, and competition. These relationships are tested by the brutality of war and the loss of comrades, leading to both moments of great camaraderie and intense conflict.
In conclusion, The Things They Carried is a powerful exploration of the impact of war on the individual soldiers who fought in Vietnam. Through its depiction of the various physical and emotional items that the soldiers carry with them, the novel delves into themes of memory, masculinity, and relationships. The Things They Carried serves as a poignant reminder of the sacrifices made by those who served in Vietnam and the lasting impact of war on the human psyche.
The Things They Carried: Summary & Analysis
He did though unload the bodies of returning soldiers who did not make it through their service. Not good, Kiowa said. This is a new one. In part, he was grieving for Ted Lavender, but mostly it was for Martha, and for himself, because she belonged to another world, which was not quite real, and because she was a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, a poet and a virgin and uninvolved, and because he realized she did not love him and never would. If you screamed, how far would the sound carry? A pisser, you know? The letters weighed 10 ounces.
He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin, all at once. When the dustoff arrived, they carried Lavender aboard. In the morning, after gassing up, I headed straight west along the Rainy River, which separates Minnesota from Canada, and which for me separated one life from another. But he was not there. You have to head for the front and hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the blood. I saw my parents calling to me from the far shoreline.
In trying to review a book as precious as The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, there is the nightmare fear of saying the wrong thing—of not getting the book's wonder across to you fairly—and of sounding merely zealous, fanatical, and hence to be dismissed. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. I can see myself sitting on Elroy Berdahl's dock near dusk one evening, the sky a bright shimmering pink, and I'm finishing up a letter to my parents that tells what I'm about to do and why I'm doing it and how sorry I am that I'd never found the courage to talk to them about it. He loved her but he hated her. He went from Vietnam to graduate school, and never really talked about his experiences in the war—except for in his writing. Finally he said something about my paper being excellent, but that he was most interested in the passion I had for the subject.
The Things They Carried is filled with such moments of beauty, sadness, perceptiveness, and power. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. This was a great choice for a Group read and discussion and I enjoyed it a lot. He realized it was only a gesture. It is successful on every level. O'Brien moves from employing the literary technique of describing the soldiers' physical artifacts to introducing the novel's primary characters.
He would accept the blame for what had happened to Ted Lavender. With Lavender's death, O'Brien creates a tension between the "actuality" of Lt. Her eyes were gray and neutral, her lips slightly open as she stared straight- on at the camera. But even if so, the story, the last one in the book, could be "true". They carried their reputations.
The Things They Carried The Things They Carried Summary & Analysis
Ted Lavender "who was scared" carries tranquilizers. The nights were very dark. Why that grayness in her eyes? While sifting through the debris, I found a copy of the novelization of the movie Independence Day. I saw my brother and sister, all the townsfolk, the mayor and the entire Chamber of Commerce and all my old teachers and girlfriends and high school buddies. He would show strength, distancing himself.
The class was half-full, and I was one of three females taking the course. After supper one evening I vomited and went back to my cabin and lay down for a few moments and then vomited again; another time, in the middle of the afternoon, I began sweating and couldn't shut it off. I think about all the potential we lost, not only in the person of those who died, but in those who came back so changed and could find no way to move forward. They carried the land itself—Vietnam, the place, the soil—a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. Henry Dobbins asked what the moral was. I imagined myself dead. A sad story that encompasses the many different aspects of soldier life during the Vietnam war.
Depending on numerous factors, such as topography and psychology, the riflemen carried anywhere from 12 to 20 magazines, usually in cloth bandoliers, adding on another 8. Right then, he thought, he should've done something brave. In the evenings I'd sometimes borrow my father's car and drive aimlessly around town, feeling sorry for myself, thinking about the war and the pig factory and how my life seemed to be collapsing toward slaughter. The land was mostly wilderness. Her letters do not indicate that she feels the same way.
We subtract the two hundred sixty for food and lodging, I still owe you a hundred and fifteen. The novel is held together by two things: the haunting clarity of O'Brien's prose and the intensity of his focus. And I want you to feel it — the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. O'Brien tries his best to incorporate Bowker's story into his novel, but at the expense of losing the core truths of the story that Bowker wrote about in his letter and what happened in Vietnam. The average age in our platoon, I'd guess, was nineteen or twenty, and as a consequence things often took on a curiously playful atmosphere, like a sporting event at some exotic reform school. Though it was still August, the air already had the smell of October, football season, piles of yellow-red leaves, everything crisp and clean. It had been a long two weeks in the bush.
It was sort of a Mash-type assignment, where wounded would be brought in by local choppers for emergency and trauma care, then shipped out by chopper to rear areas. I remember dropping my water gun. The reality was and is that labels like "soldier" and "enemy" and "foreign national" do little to assuage the inherent and complicated humanity that we all bring with us and share between us. He put his hand on the dead boy's wrist. That's the real obsession.
