The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien's semi-autobiographical work on the Vietnam War is a collection of beautifully written, melancholy short stories set both during the conflict and decades years later.

My brother recommended this book years ago. He has a habit of enjoying books that are poetic and lyrical, reflective and very sad. So I put it off, deciding I needed to be in the right mood. This year, my library's book discussion choices were the final push I needed to finally put it on the top of the "to read" list. I am really glad I did. It is very sad, and violent at times, which I expected. I was not prepared with how bowled over I was, by the characters, the writing, the exploration of "truth" vs. "fact," the working through of a terrible war by writing show more stories. I found myself slowing down, reading only two or three stories at a time so that I could really take each one in. Each story is placed carefully, so they each tell a story and they each illuminate the others. I have so much to think about and talk about in discussion tomorrow, and I took far more copious notes than I usually do, even for a book discussion book. Highly, highly recommended. show less

Read for ... well, I don't even remember how many times I've read this book. But this WAS the first time I've read it since I got back from war myself. And shockingly, it isn't the war parts that got me - it's the truth parts; it's the parts that suggest a story can save a life and be more true even when it is made-up. It's telling a deeper story and letting the details be imagined from that pure spot of memory and emotion. This is now, as it has always been - beautiful. But more than that, now. Now, it's personal.

Read it.

I have read. I think, six O'Brien books and enjoyed them all, but THE THINGS THEY CARRIED is the one I keep coming back to. I first read these stories over 25 years ago and then re-read some of them a few times since. Found this copy in the local thrift store a couple months ago, and I couldn't bear to leave it there. Fifty cents. Have been dipping into it now for past few weeks, and remembering once again what a very personal, gut-wrenching thing it must have been for O'Brien to set these stories down, sometimes more than once, from different points of view, with slight or major changes variations, always contemplating the awful and mysterious finality of death, which he witnessed often and even caused himself during his time in the show more war.

The Broadway Books edition I have now is from 1998 and is fronted with eight solid pages of glowing praise in blurbs from all over this country. So what could I possibly add? What it all amounts to is a book in which a very talented writer, who also happens to be a tortured veteran of a misbegotten and pointless war, literally pours out his heart, his soul, and his guts. He remains, all these years later, haunted by what he saw and did in that war, unable to forget any of it. This is a beautiful book, richly deserving of its reputation as a classic of war lit. This time I'll hang on to it, because it is a book worth revisiting. My highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA show less

I had a friend who went to war. Part of him did not come home. His shoulder and much of his upper body was metal plate, but that is not the part I am talking about. The part that was left there was a piece of his soul, an innocence and lightness that could never be recaptured. He talked about the war when he was in his cups, which he was too often. His best buddy in the war was killed in front of his eyes, and Sam was convinced (be it true or not) that the bullet he took was meant for Sam. He felt his friend had saved his life and that he was not worthy of that sacrifice. Knowing him made reading this book a harder experience for me, it made the stories more real, it reminded me how many Sams there were out there in the jungles of show more Vietnam.

This is, of course, a book about war, and as such, not surprisingly, a book about loss. It is also a book about death, even the deaths of those who live, for people die in stages sometimes, they die in bits and pieces that they bury and exhume and rebury.

I cannot imagine anyone reads this book without taking it personally. Certainly the men who fought this war must find something I can never touch inside its pages. What I found myself seeing were Sam’s eyes, the way they sparkled when he was free of war for a moment and the way they clouded and glazed when he tried to tell anyone about what he was feeling. I would sometimes catch him in a quiet moment at his desk, and I knew without a word that he was there. From the first page, I was walking with Sam, not with Tim, but then I realized Sam and Tim and Kiowa and Curt Lemon, are all the same person for one short moment in time.

I know why I have had this on my TBR for so long and procrastinated about opening it to read. No one really wants to go back to that war for even a second. I understand as little now about why were there as I did then, and history usually gives a person more perspective, not less. I think about all the potential we lost, not only in the person of those who died, but in those who came back so changed and could find no way to move forward. Tim O’Brien is one of the lucky ones. He found a voice through his writing and purged some of his ghosts in that way. Some men just carried them to the grave, unpurged...and that must be the worst weight they were asked to carry. show less

As Tim O’Brien knows all too well, battle tested soldiers carry the heavy weight of their experiences throughout life. Even though the tales they share may change with time and distance, it is through storytelling that the trauma of warfare finds meaning and heals. Published in 1990, The Things They Carried is regarded as a classic study, detailing what a good many American soldiers experienced during the Vietnam War. In this collection of linked stories drawn from the writer’s tour of duty, he focuses on soldiers serving in Alpha Company. Even though O’Brien makes clear they are fictional in nature, there is no doubt each contains essential truths that have long haunted him.

While a sobering read, it shows the macabre humor show more soldiers use to preserve their sanity, and how the trauma of warfare can strip away a soldier’s sense of humanity toward the enemy they are facing. Bravado is used to bury fear, and even if horror is joked away, its seed is likely to later bloom into post traumatic stress.

These stories are both haunting and heartbreaking. It is no wonder that many of them continue to turn up as assigned readings in schools. For anyone who might glorify warfare, The Things They Carried serves as a reminder of the high cost extracted, not only among those wounded or killed, but on the mental health of all. Almost twenty-five years after the telling, this book is a reminder that as long as survivors remain to tell the tale, no war is truly over. show less

The Things They Carried hit me almost in the opposite way. As I began reading the collection of stories and essays that make up the novel, I had doubts that it would knock my socks off as it had for so many others. The more I read, the more the stories came together, and the more the book came to life for me. By the end, I was, in fact, blown away.

Tim O'Brien's accounts of the Vietnam War in The Things They Carried are fiction, based in fact. It's hard not to think of the book as completely nonfiction when reading it, especially since the author writes in the first person and the narrator shares the author's name.

O'Brien's book is real and raw, sometimes funny, often sad. The collection of stories is about friendship, love, hope and show more death as much as it is about the war experience itself. Several of the stories stood out for me, in particular the one in which Tim receives his draft letter. Opposed to the war, he considers dodging the draft. How does a person reconcile one's beliefs with one's duty? My own father enlisted in the military and so his going to Vietnam was not a forced issue, not really. What must it have been like for a man who didn't make that choice on his own, who was forced to fight in a war he didn't believe in? "On the Rainy River" struck a chord with me that still lingers in the back of my mind and probably will for a long time to come.

There are also stories about the first kill, about coping with death, how a soldier may do many brave things during a war, but it is what he fails to do or isn't able to do that gnaws away at him. The author captures the many faces of war: the friendships that form, the horrors, the pressure, pain and strengths of the men. And how fitting the title, The Things They Carried! Not only do these men carry heavy loads of physical items, they also bare psychological and emotional burdens.

In fiction, there is truth. Sometimes it is easier to get to the truth through fiction than through nonfiction. We can see into the heart of it much more clearly. Both Paco's Story and The Things They Carried are good examples of portraying the truth in fiction at its finest. show less

The Things They Carried is an excellent companion to Ken Burns's documentary, The Vietnam War, in which Tim O'Brien is one of the many contributors. It is categorized as a work of fiction...a series of stories about being a foot soldier in Vietnam, which O'Brien was. I think the line between fact and fiction is very very blurry here, but I have no doubt that all of it is True. O'Brien plays around with the concept of truth in fiction within the text; he tells the same story from different perspectives, often repeating certain "facts" like a mantra, or as if the narrator is attempting to settle the "truth" of the matter in his own mind in a way he can live with. He presents certain chapters as direct address to the reader ("here's why I show more told that story that way"), but are those real/factual, or just also True? There is no shying away from the grim, unimaginable horrors of that particular war; the things clean-cut American kids (many of them teenagers, can we please never never never forget that?) did there that defy their upbringing are spelled out in graphic prose. The things that they suffered and endured and died from, the lies they were told and the other lies they told themselves or their loved ones, the physical torment they learned to live with, and the mental anguish that eventually did some of them in are all in there. And yet the overall effect of The Things They Carried isn't depressing or horrifying at all. It's a brilliant piece of writing, with flashes of pure poetry, and an interesting structure. The sum is quite inexplicably beautiful. Highly recommended. show less