The Things They Carried

Author Introduction

The novel, “The things they carried” has been written by William Timothy O'Brien. O'Brien was born on October 1, 1946 to a salesman of insurance services and a school teacher in the city of Austin, Minnesota. He was then brought up in a small town of Southern part of the state. When he was a child, he used to visit different public libraries and practice various kinds of magic tricks (Bloom, pp 45-55). He was highly inspired by his father and this inspiration inclined him to focus on a career in writing. He concentrated his arena of focus in studying political sciences as he started his studies in Macalester College, St.Paul which is located in Minnesota. During his years in college, he endeavoured to ignore the Vietnam War. He then attended the protest against the war. He also aspired to join the State Department.

Novel Introduction

“The things they carried” is a collection of related stories. The author Tim O'Brien describes the experiences of an American platoon in the Vietnam War. The book was first published in 1990 as a hardcover from Houghton Mifflin. The book is largely made-up of stories and the main character of the novel is the author, Tim O'Brien. Before the book published in general, some of the stories appeared without a causal relationship in several magazines.

Background

In the first half of the story, it discusses on physical objects, weapons and memorabilia. The second half deals with more abstract, such as anxiety and responsibility. Later, the character Tim O'Brien tells the experiences when he was selected as a soldier for the war. He went to the North to the Canadian border. He describes himself as a pacifist. Finally, he decides against it because he does not want to lose the honor and family. While during the story several characters were killed. In the very first chapter we learn about the death of Ted Lavender as it delineated in more details. Then the death of Curt Lemon occurs, who comes in careless play with grenades. Kiowas died because he could not get out of a mud field. This is one of the many stories depicted on a meta-level which plays in the period around 1990. In the last chapter, he goes into his childhood and here he explains the background to his lack of courage to go against the negative elements.

The book is about the memories of Vietnam Veterans. The story of The Things They Carried plays in mid-1970 near the village of Than Khe and deals with the above-mentioned earlier train, which consists of seventeen soldiers, nine of which are also named. First, it contains almost by way of list, number of things that the soldiers carried during their deployment in Vietnam. These things are both tangible and stressful memories, experiences and feelings. On the other hand it tells the story of Lieutenant Cross, who is distracted mentally because of his love for Martha during his work. Another issue in the novel ...