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The characters of the platoon are repeatedly shown to have no real understanding of why they’re being sent on any particular mission, nor how their actions fundamentally change the conflict in which they’re embroiled.
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What is the significance of the title, “The Things They...
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They are self-assured without being braggarts and are...
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'The Things They Carried,' 20 Years On. In this half-hour...
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Here, the author considers the entirety of O’Brien’s...
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The Things They Carried. Full Book Summary. The protagonist, who is named Tim O’Brien, begins by describing an event that occurred in the middle of his Vietnam experience. “The Things They Carried” catalogs the variety of things his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company brought on their missions.
Throughout the novel, the soldiers are forced to construct a new morality as a result of the violence required of them; however, the soldiers’ wartime moral system conflicts with the civilian moral system, which they knew before the war and which is still in place on the home front.
- Sarah Bonney
- 2016
In The Things They Carried, a memoir of and meditation upon the Viet-nam War, Tim O'Brien catalogues the objects, memories, and emotions American soldiers carried into the war - objects, memories, and emotions invested with hope of talismanic powers: They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. They carried
Read an in-depth analysis of Jimmy Cross. As the book progresses, the conflict deepens for Tim. He alternates stories about the war with shorter pieces that reveal something of his life in the present. We see Tim as both a young soldier and the older writer that character grew into.
The title story describes what the soldiers must lug with them—both literally and figuratively— as they march: food, canteens, flak jackets, and weapons, as well as grief, terror, secrets, and memories.
The Things They Carried (1990) is a collection of linked short stories by American novelist Tim O'Brien, about a platoon of American soldiers fighting on the ground in the Vietnam War. His third book about the war, it is based upon his experiences as a soldier in the 23rd Infantry Division.
