the things they carried essays

The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien

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The Things They Carried Essays

Rationalizing the fear within brad champion, the things they carried.

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...

Physical and Psychological Burdens Kristen Alycia McConnell

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...

Role of Kathleen and Linda in The Things They Carried Brendan O'Loughlin

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...

Let’s Communicate: It’s Not About War Christina A. Arrington

“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...

Turning Over a New Leaf: Facing the Pressures of Society Mindy Kim

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...

Guilt in The Things They Carried Anonymous 12th Grade

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,...

Love in The Things They Carried: A Cataclysm of Emotional Warfare and Deterioration Anonymous 12th Grade

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...

Truth and Fiction in The Things They Carried Anonymous College

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...

The Soldier's Burden: Masculinity in The Things They Carried Rosie Hoile 11th Grade

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...

Metafiction and Author’s Intention In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried Anonymous 11th Grade

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...

How “The Things They Carried” Challenges the Conventions of the Memoir Genre Anonymous 12th Grade

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...

The Things That Matter: Tim O'Brien and Truthful Fiction Jared Matthew Jageler 10th Grade

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...

"So It Went!" Malena Marcase 12th Grade

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...

Thoughts on Courage Sook-Hee Evans 11th Grade

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...

Social Burdens, Individual Men: The Draft, Drug Use, and PTSD in The Things They Carried Anonymous College

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...

Time of Luck: The Random Nature of Survival in O'Brien's Text Tim O'Brien 10th Grade

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...

The Symbolism of Weight in The Things They Carried Joshua Scott Fouche College

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...

Martha's Presence, and Absence: A Critical Analysis of the Role of Women in The Things They Carried Anonymous College

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...

The Loss of Innocence in a Time of War Anonymous 11th Grade

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...

Feminist and New Historical Approach to The Things They Carried Michael Campagna College

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...

Humanizing War: A Comparison of The Things They Carried and Persepolis Anonymous 11th Grade

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 Wartime Anonymous 11th Grade

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...

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The Things They Carried Theme Essay

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Emotional Burden in O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction, the things they carried, works cited.

The Things They Carried is a fictional chef-d’oeuvre by Tim O’Brien, which catalogs among other things, the different things that soldiers carried to the Vietnam War. These soldiers carried emotional and physical burdens viz. guilt, fear, love, pocketknives, M-16 rifles among other things. O’Brien explores the theme of emotional burdens artistically and at some point, comically. Obrien notes, “They carried the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing-these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories…cowardice…they carried the soldier’s fear (20). Even though the things they carried were meant to help them fight the enemy, in the end, the intangible things (emotional burdens) turned out to fight the soldiers, killing them from within.

The emotional burdens as explored by O’Brien came in different forms and each soldier had a special burden that underscored his woes. The emotional burden of guilt surfaces immediately after the story starts. Jimmy Cross, a lieutenant enlisted to take care of the other soldiers is the victim of the guilt burden. Jimmy witnessed as a bullet broke open Lavender’s skull, an incident that plunged him into emotional turmoil. Given the fact that he was the one in charge of the other soldiers’ well-being, he felt he could have done something to prevent Lavender’s death. Unfortunately, he could do nothing at that point; Lavender was dead and gone for good. Jimmy became emotionally troubled because instead of concentrating on the security and well-being of fellow soldiers he could only think of Martha. Consequently, Lavender died due to his lack of concentration or so he thought. A person charged with the responsibility of taking care of his fellow soldiers should be focused to achieve his objective. Unfortunately, Jimmy could not live up to this duty and when Lavender died before his eyes, he realized how careless he had been in executing his duties. All these feelings culminated into guilt feelings, an emotional burden that he had to bear so long as the war continued. What a terrible emotional baggage for one to carry! To cover his guilt, Jimmy embarked on a journey to become the best lieutenant. However, for this to happen, he had to sacrifice some emotions like love for Martha, his college crush. The issue of Jimmy’s love for Martha ushers in the next emotional burden viz. love.

Cross sincerely loved Martha and no matter how hard he tried to subdue these feelings, they resurfaced with time. This emotional burden weighed so heavily on him that at times he lost focus on the war. O’Brien observes, “He loved her so much…though painful, he wondered who had been with her that afternoon” (8). Time and space stood between Jimmy and the love of her life. If only he could roll time back, he would spend some quality time by her side. Unfortunately, these were only fantasies and as the adage asserts, fantasy never mimics reality. The death of Lavender unveiled this truth to Jimmy and he had to shed this emotional baggage at whatever cost. Though painful, Jimmy decided to forget Martha completely, and focus on the war. As a way of tearing down this emotional baggage, he resolved to burn all love letters, photographs, and anything else that reminded him of Martha. Forgetting a lover is not an easy task, it takes more than a willing heart, it takes absolute resolve and this comes with its emotional upheavals. Emotionally, Cross was a torn person, full of sorrows and heavy laden with emotional burdens. To release his feelings, he could only cry throughout the night under the cover of the darkness. Just like any other person, soldiers have emotions; they crave for love, acceptance, and warmth. Regrettably, war robs them of these elemental things in a human’s life. O’Brien deliberately explores Jimmy’s case to show the emotional burdens that the soldiers brought along together with the things they carried (Kaplan 63). Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is not alone in this predicament, as aforementioned, every soldier had his fair share of emotional baggage, as shown by the few soldiers O’Brien chose to use in The Things They Carried.

Family ties are usually very strong and separating someone from his/her family amounts to emotional torture; something that the soldiers had to live with. For instance, Kiowa, “…carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father…” (O’Brien 3). Nothing could remind Kiowa of his dad like that treasured bible; every time he saw the bible, he would remember his beloved father. Apart from this, Kiowa carried the memories of his grandfather by preserving that ‘old hunting tomahawk.’ Even though physically burdened by things like the M-16 rifle, these treasured assortments carried memories of Kiowa’s family, memories of his almost lost family, something that burdened him emotionally. Henry Dobbins on his part carried a pair of pantyhose and he would poke his noses into the paper containing the panties from time to time. Not that Henry Dobbins loved his girlfriend’s panties; no, he missed her and this burdened him emotionally. Regrettably, the closest he would come to his girlfriend was through feeling the smell of her panties, a pathetic way to find warmth and love. Apart from emotions of love and loneliness, fear was part of these soldiers.

On the battlefield, anyone could die and this inevitable fact burdened the soldiers emotionally. Just like Lavender and others who died in the course of the war, anybody else would die at any time and this uncertainty amounted to emotional torture. O’Brien posits, “Imagination was a killer” (10), to emphasize the burden of fear that these soldiers carried around. The imagination of being the next victim to die emotionally burdened these soldiers. To cope with these torturing emotions, they had to dehumanize every human trait in them. Unfortunately, psychologically they became changed forever. O’Brien concludes, “you start clean and you get dirty and then afterward it is never the same” (114). Even to date, the majority of the surviving soldiers have exhibited some psychological disorders at one point in their lives. The psychological rip off that these soldiers underwent narrows down to emotional baggage; baggage, which they knew not, the day of its relief.

In conclusion, the soldiers that went to the Vietnam War carried burdens that were more than the physical burdens; they carried emotional burdens of memories of their families coupled with the fear of not knowing when death would strike. For sure, the intangible things that they carried had real weight, to some extent, heavier than the physical burdens. Jimmy Cross carried the guilt of letting Lavender die while engrossed in thoughts of his ever-elusive lover, Martha. Kiowa carried the emotional burden of his father and grandfather and the possibility of not seeing them once again weighed heavily on him. Collectively, these soldiers experienced different forms of emotional torture, which boiled down to emotional burdens as O’Brien explores in his fictional masterpiece, The Things They Carried.

Kaplan, Steven. Understanding Tim O’Brien . Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. Print.

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 31). Emotional Burden in O'Brien's "The Things They Carried". https://ivypanda.com/essays/emotional-burden-in-obriens-the-things-they-carried/

"Emotional Burden in O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"." IvyPanda , 31 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/emotional-burden-in-obriens-the-things-they-carried/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Emotional Burden in O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"'. 31 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Emotional Burden in O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/emotional-burden-in-obriens-the-things-they-carried/.

1. IvyPanda . "Emotional Burden in O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/emotional-burden-in-obriens-the-things-they-carried/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Emotional Burden in O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"." October 31, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/emotional-burden-in-obriens-the-things-they-carried/.

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