The things They Carried

A detailed Summary of The things They Carried


The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, is a novel in which you become the characters inside the stories. You feel the pain of the war; you share in the sorrow, and the tragedy of the war and the events that transpire. You feel the pain that First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross must have felt in his love for Martha; the gut-wrenching sorrow that Norman Bowker must have felt in his guilt over the loss of Kiowa. This whole story is full of shorts about the loss and pain involved in war.

Tim O'Brien meant this novel to make you feel what he, and the other members of the Alpha Company must have felt. "I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. (179)" These are the words of Tim O'Brien, not the Tim O'Brien involved in the war, but the Tim O'Brien that wrote the book. He is saying that he sometimes stretches the truth, or


This story is so sad, and it makes me hate war and what it does to the mind of the soldiers. It hardens them, and makes them into killing machines; I hate it. O'Brien was effective in his story telling, because he made me hate war, he made me picture that poor baby buffalo and feel sympathy for it. He made me blame the war for the buffalo's pain; therefore he was successful.

In most instances, war is portrayed as a glorious thing. America is "making the world safe for democracy," and helping out weaker nations. You see the soldiers coming home to their beautiful and faithful wives or girlfriends; every soldier has a woman waiting for him at home. You see the children of the war-torn nations happy and eating healthily again, and you see that everything is all right. You don't see, however, the nightmares of the veterans, or the cold sweats and the agony. You don't see, how

Some common words found in the essay are:
Tim O'Brien, Norman Bowker, Alpha Company, tim o'brien, Jimmy Cross, involved war tim, war tim o'brien, story sad, baby buffalo, war tim, hate war, feel pain, involved war,

Approximate Word count = 592
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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