The Things They Carried

A detailed Summary of The Things They Carried


The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought about from the Vietnam War. O'Brien makes several statements about war through these characters. He shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressures of war, he makes an effective antiwar statement, and he shows how a person completely changes because of the war. By using details in his stories, O'Brien convincingly makes each point.

The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is one of O'Brien's main themes in his novel. By selecting details that reveal the drastic change in manner within the men, O'Brien creates an understanding of the effects of war on the soldiers. One of the soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a Thumb. It had been cut from a corpse, a bo


y of fifteen or sixteen". Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, yet war makes him into a very hard-mannered soldier with no emotion. This is shown when he carries the severed finger as a trophy, proud of his kill. The transformation shown through Bowler is an excellent indicator of the emotional change that most of the soldiers undergo. To bring an innocent young man from caring to hateful, requires a great force; the war provides this force. Another example of this would be a soldier named Ted Lavender who adopted an orphaned puppy. "Azar strapped it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device". Azar has become demented; to kill a puppy that someone else has adopted is horrible. However, this example of violence has become normal behavior for these men; if one man shows compassion it is immediately killed by another. The point of these stories of kil

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Approximate Word count = 605
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels

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