The Things They Carried1

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is not a novel about the Vietnam War. It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought about from the war. O'Brien makes several statements about war through these dynamic characters. He shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressures of war, he makes an effective antiwar statement, and he comments on the reversal of a social deviation into the norm. By skillfully employing the stylistic technique of specific, conscious detail selection and utilizing connotative diction, O'Brien thoroughly and convincingly makes each point.

The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is one of O'Brien's predominant themes in his novel. By consciously selecting very descriptive details that reveal the drastic change in manner within the men, O'Brien creates within the reader an understanding of the effects of war on its participants. One of the soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a Thumb. . .The Thumb was dark brown, rubbery to touch. . . It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen"(13). Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, yet war makes him into

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The war has completely reversed their morals. Here O'Brien shows the level of contempt felt towards the war; draft dodging is dangerous. His dissatisfaction with the drafting process is included in his statement, "I was a liberal, for Christ's sake: if they needed fresh bodies, why not draft some back-to-the-stone age-hawk?"(44). O'Brien creates an attitude of disgust in the reader with the word, further fulfilling his purpose in condemning violence. Tim O'Brien very effectively portrays their hatred and the severe negative effects the war had on American soldiers in his excellent, convincing novel The Things They Carried. Azar strapped it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device"(39). The connotation

associated with boy enhances the fact that killing has no emotional effect on the Americans, that they kill for sport and do not care who or what their game may be. The VC from which Bowker took the thumb was just "a boy"(13), giving the image of a young, innocent person who should not have been subjected to the horrors of war. The idea of a baby is abstract, and the killing of one is frowned upon in modern society, regardless of species. Also connotatively enhancing the antiwar theme is the word bodies to describe draftees; while an accurate evaluation scientifically, it gives the reader the impression that the young men that are being brought into the war to become statistics, part of a body count. A friend of O'Brien's, Ted Lavender, "carried six or seven ounces of premium dope"(4), which indicates not only the soldiers' familiarity with the drug, but their acquired knowledge of the quality of the drug. Even more drastic in connotation to be killed is the "orphaned puppy"(39). However, frequently are the changes more drastic. Even the squad's supervisor, the platoon leader Lieutenant Cross, is unaffected by the soldiers' blatant use of an illegal substance; he has become so used to the occurrence that he no longer condemns its use.

Approximate Word count = 1558
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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