"The Things They Carried"

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes the book "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Specifically, it discusses the novel's antiwar position and how this position relates to the era of unrest in the United States over the Vietnam War. The paper looks at how the stories of the young men O'Brien portrays in his novel underscore the horrors and tediousness of war. According to the paper, by the end of the book, the reader understands just how war is hell, and why this book is such a strong statement against war and the horrors it creates on both sides of the fighting.

From the Paper:

"Author Tim O'Brien knows the Vietnam War because he fought there. It seems as if it would be impossible to write a book like The Things They Carried without having actually experienced the war. That is one reason the book is so vivid and so interesting. The author experienced many of these things first-hand. That is also why it is so disturbing. The author saw many of these things or things like them, and many of them are horrible. O'Brien notes that the book is fiction, and yet, many of the characters seem so real they must have existed, and the lines of reality blur even more when the reader realizes the narrator of these short stories strung together into a novel is named Tim O'Brien."

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