Both The Things They Carried and Apocalypse Now explore the trauma of the Vietnam War and its influence on soldiers' fears. Similar characters appear in both works, their identities crafted to represent different aspects of human nature. The...

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is a highly unique work, a compilation of many stories carried home by veterans of the Vietnam War. The length of the stories in the 22 chapters varies dramatically, a technique that "demonstrates well the...

Throughout The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien often alludes to Kathleen, his daughter, and Linda, his childhood friend with cancer. However, Kathleen and Linda do not exist. O’Brien includes them in his story because they allow him to interact...

“How to Tell a True War Story,” in Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, has almost nothing to do with war. Rather, it has to do with the difficulties of a speaker to communicate their feelings—which are conveyed through stories—as well as...

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and...

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien discusses the physical and emotional burdens that come along with war. The “things” that the soldiers carry are both literal and figurative. They carry sentimental items to remind them of home, food,...

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a collection of essays, all centered on anecdotes of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. The seemingly straightforward recollections slowly reveal dense layers of personal and metaphorical meanings...

In Steven Kaplan’s essay “The Things They Carried” published in Columbia: University of South Carolina Press he says, “Almost all Vietnam War writing--fiction and nonfiction--makes clear that the only certain thing during the Vietnam War was that...

Most, if not all of them, were drafted unwillingly. They were asked to leave their families and their homes, their girls or their kids, and they were told to die and kill for reasons unclear. These soldiers marched through swamps and villages with...

In his masterpiece The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien writes a collection of heartbreaking, witty, unbelievable stories about a group of young American soldiers trudging through the war against Vietnam. The Things They Carried manages to convey...

The question of whether or not Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” conforms to the conventions of the memoir genre is a complex matter quite simply because it is a novel that deliberately blurs the lines of fact and fiction. The stories are...

It is one of the greatest paradoxes in literature: a made-up story is more accurate than a factual story. Tim O’Brien sets out to prove this notion in The Things They Carried. This is a book of short stories, some of his personal war tales, some...

We see playful children - giggling, laughing, not a care in the world - and envy their innocence. Their spirits have not yet been hardened and jaded by the world around them. Our lives are made up of a series of moments, big and small, that...

Throughout war literature, characters of soldiers are fundamentally exposed. Young men go to war and come out with countless stories and scars from their adventures. For tremendous acts of bravery, some soldiers are presented with awards such as...

Watching friends die, being shot at, and dealing with the fact that death is looming around every is a reality for soldiers regardless of what side they are fighting on. Vietnam was an extremally controversial war, and much of the nation was...

In the novel The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien demonstrates many ideas about war, survival, corruption, and powerlessness through his collection of short stories. Throughout his book, O’Brien describes many incidents that happen merely...

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the first chapter presents the concept of weight in two opposing forms, that of the physical weight of the items they carry, and also the emotional weight of their past experiences. These messages imbue...

Although female characters play a small role in The Things They Carried, it is a significant one. Women such as Martha affect the men of the Alpha Company by providing them with emotional ties that anchor these soldiers to reality as they make...

Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, said that the “most enduring Vietnam stories are those that are between the absolutely unbelievable and the mundane” (O’Brien 151). Such is the story of Mark Fossie - retold in the “Sweetheart of the...

By applying the Feminist and New Historical criticisms to a work, the reader is presented with a deeper understanding of a story and a clearer analysis of the text than other traditional approaches. Unlike other literary theories, the feminist...

The novels “The Things They Carried” by O’Brien and “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi uses the narrative, with a war context, to invite the reader to identify with scenarios, characters and ideas. Marjane Satrapi denounces the Iranian War with...

Women in WartimeIn his novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores the physical, emotional, and mental burdens of war. Set during the Vietnam War, O’Brien guides the reader through the common feelings of guilt, loss, and terror felt by...

In the novel Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien, Paul Berlin’s war experience follows three elaborate storylines in order to explore the effect war has on a soldier. The storyline focusing on the fantastical pursuit of Cacciato reveals many...

The reality of war unfortunately creates an oppressive system that causes soldiers to struggle with internal conflict and individual thought. In the book Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien, Paul Berlin’s thoughts and emotions are presented...