“The Thing They Carried” By Tim O'Brien

The essay is on the book “The Things They Carried” by Tim O'Brien and published by Houghton Mifflin in 1990. Tim O'Brien was born in 1946 in Austin, Minnesota. He graduated from Macalester College in 1968. He served as an infantryman from 1969 to 1970 with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, after which he decided to do graduate studies in government at Harvard University.

He wrote this book in 1990, called it a fiction but the story seems to be a combination of fiction and the actual events that he might have had during the time he served for the U.S Army. The story talks about a unit of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. It starts by describing Lieutenant Jimmy Cross who was the leader of Alpha Company (O'Brien, p.5-12). Cross was in love with Martha, a girl from his college in New Jersey. Cross has been writing letters to Martha but has not got any indication of love from Martha's side. The story than moves forward by stating that cross along with other soldiers is on a mission in Vietnam. He carries the letters that he has written for Martha along with him. The story shows, that during the mission, Cross is always dreaming that a day would come, when he would be with Martha, and dreams about things that they would do together. During the mission Cross remembers the time when he went for a movie with Martha, where he touched Martha's knee, but she did not like it. He wishes that if Martha had allowed him, to touch her knee, he would have carried her through the stairs, to his bed, tied her on his bed and touched her knee throughout the night (Rena, p.1).

Tim O'Brien beautifully describes the basic necessities that ...