The Things They Carried

             The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is a rich work of fiction, which takes place in the Vietnam War. The narrator's point of view is as of this middle-aged man who has become a writer and only writes war stories to be able to express his grief.
             The novel opens with a chapter to simply explain the actual things the soldiers carried. From all sort of weapons to good luck charms such as the pantyhoses a certain guy wore around his neck, they carried these things with them which added up to over thirty pounds of excess baggage.
             After this chapter, the author reminisces the war times, telling random stories about the soldiers with whom he marched and how they perished. O'Brien started with Lieutenant Cross's obsession with a girl from back home which led to the story of how Ted Lavender got shot in the head when he went out to pee. The author added in many small paragraphs of remembrances of the crazy things they pulled off to lighten up the mood of the book before he began explaining the terrible things that happened in war. He told of how Mitchell Sanders picked out the lice on his head and mailed it to his draft office. He also told of how Curt Lemon went trick or treating on a village in Vietnam with nothing on but a pair of boots, paint and his M-16 on Halloween.
             The Author then explains how he never wanted to come to the war. He explains how he worked in a pig butchery shop and how he had plans of going to Harvard for graduate school. When he received the draft notice he drove north to Canada and stayed in a lodge with an old man who helped him realize that he could not run from the war, from his family and/or from his life.
             He began telling of how Curt Lemon died. Curt Lemon stepped on a land mine when he was playing catch with a buddy. His body got plastered onto a tree and because this story is not moral the author expressed that this is the only characteristic of how the reader can te...

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The Things They Carried. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 06:43, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/28536.html