The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Introduction

“The Things They Carried” by Tim O'Brien deals with the responsibility, remorse, and the isolation and loneliness soldiers went through the war of Vietnam, chiefly due to the emotional immaturity of the soldiers. However, it is not surprising as many of the veteran soldiers who have participated in wars suffer from its lingering psychological and emotional effects; especially when they had to kill the other human beings or see the things they were not psychologically grown-up enough to judge reasonably. The concept of reality for O'Brien is distorted, he construct stories about the dead people; this notion of his took hold when his friend in 4th grade died succumbing to brain tumor. O'Brien believes that by talking about the dead people we can keep them alive. Isolation and loneliness were backdrops against all war activity in Vietnam and remained with the soldiers long after the war was over. O'Brien dealt with his guilt and isolation by writing and rearranging historical events. Lieutenant Cross felt laden with guilt because he believed that he allowed two soldiers in his charge to die needless and gruesome deaths (Steinglass 2010, 1).

Character of Tim O'Brien

Tim plays three roles in this book: as a soldier, as a writer and a kid. These three roles are all separate but same in a way. Tim as a soldier had never expected that he would participate in a war. He graduated with a full scholarship at Harvard. He went to the war due to embarrassment of not being involved when his men in platoon were in Vietnam since a long time. He is a faithful listener and listens to everyone's stories. He notices many things like moving light in trees, grotesque and awesome beauty of napalm. He used to watch Azar's antics and Henry Dobbin's random kindness. He is the only active participant in three wars he mentioned which were 'The Man I Killed,' 'In the Field' and 'The Ghost Soldiers'. In 'The Man I Killed' he cannot look away from the man he killed with a grenade. In the second war, he became the cause of the death of his friend Kiowa. In the third war, he seeks revenge.

Tim, as a writer, writes short stories about the time he spent in Vietnamese war as a foot soldier. He invented the stories and the characters and events by himself. All three wars discussed under Tim, the soldier were invented by the writer and were fictitious. In the first story, the writer portrays Tim as one who gives a face to the faceless dead. Second war discusses culpability, where every person in the death of a righteous man was drowned in the field. Third war tells about getting totally into hate and madness. All the three stories of war discuss taking responsibility for the horrors of war, about enforcing responsibility on oneself (O'Brien 1990, 1).

As a kid, Tim is a nine year old boy. He loves a girl, Linda who died due to ...