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The Things They Carried Thesis Statements and Essay Topics

Below you will find four outstanding thesis statements / paper topics for “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brian can be used as essay starters. All four incorporate at least one of the themes found in “The Things They Carried” and are broad enough so that it will be easy to find textual support, yet narrow enough to provide a focused clear thesis statement. These thesis statements offer a short summary of “The Things They Carried” in terms of different elements that could be important in an essay. You are, of course, free to add your own analysis and understanding of the plot or themes to them. Using the essay topics below in conjunction with the list of  important quotes from “The Things They Carried”  on our quotes page, you should have no trouble connecting with the text and writing an excellent essay.

Topic #1: The things they carried

There is a list given for each soldier of the items he carried. Some of the items can be physically touched. Other items can only be felt or described. For each soldier, the items and emotions he carries are significant. Describe how the choice of items relates to each character. Include arguments where applicable about how the items affect others and each soldier’s survival. Determine which items hold the most value.

 Topic #2: Kiowa

Kiowa is one of the many soldiers who is killed. His death is described in three of the stories. Explore the reasons why Kiowa’s death stands out to so many of the other soldiers. Why is it that so many of them claim responsibility and guilt for his loss of life? Illustrate what actions could have been taken to avoid Kiowa’s death and the guilt on the minds of so many soldiers.

Topic #3: Common themes

Although the stories are written and compiled by O’Brien and are labeled as fiction, O’Brien draws on his own experiences during the Vietnam War and the experiences of others. Many of the stories share common themes such as love, loss, regret of things left behind and left undone, violence, and dissatisfaction. The soldiers that survive come home severely changed by their experiences. Trace a common thread throughout the stories and relay how it is significant.

Topic #4: Controversy surrounding the Vietnam War

There was much controversy surrounding the Vietnam War. Soldiers were sent to kill the bad guys, only to learn that they were often firing on women and children. Throughout the stories, the soldiers reveal how disillusioned they became during and after the time they spent fighting. Choose one or two of the stories and examine the disillusionment that is described. What elements and events contribute to this disappointment in the military and the United States.

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Essays on The Things They Carried

The things they carried essay topics and outline examples, essay title 1: truth and fiction in "the things they carried".

Thesis Statement: Tim O'Brien blurs the lines between truth and fiction in "The Things They Carried" to convey the emotional and psychological truths of war experiences, demonstrating the power of storytelling as a coping mechanism.

• Introduction
• The Nature of Truth in Storytelling
• Examples of Fictional Elements in the Book
• The Emotional and Psychological Impact on Characters
• How Storytelling Helps Characters Cope

Essay Title 2: The Weight of Emotional Baggage in "The Things They Carried"

Thesis Statement: "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien explores the heavy burden of emotional baggage carried by soldiers during the Vietnam War, emphasizing that these intangible loads can be just as impactful as physical ones.

• The Literal and Symbolic Items Carried by Soldiers
• Depictions of Emotional Baggage in the Stories
• The Interplay Between Physical and Emotional Loads
• The Long-Term Effects on Soldiers' Lives

Essay Title 3: Morality and Ethical Dilemmas in "The Things They Carried"

Thesis Statement: Tim O'Brien raises questions about morality and ethical dilemmas faced by soldiers in "The Things They Carried," illustrating the complex choices and consequences that war imposes on individuals.

• Situations of Moral Complexity in the Stories
• Character Reactions to Ethical Dilemmas
• Exploring the Themes of Guilt and Responsibility
• The Broader Commentary on the Vietnam War

Ted Lavender Character Analysis

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The Things They Carried Rhetorical Analysis

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Tim O’brien's Use of Figurative Language to Portray The Theme of Death in The Things They Carried

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An Insight into The Emotions of War in The Things They Carried

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March 28, 1990, Tim O'Brien

Collection of interconnected short stories

Historical Fiction

Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Henry Dobbins, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, Tim O'Brien

The narrative unfolds through series of interconnected short stories that depict a platoon of American soldiers' experiences during the Vietnam War, memories, and the items they carry with them. The protagonist, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, grapples with his responsibilities as a leader and his longing for a girl back home. He carries letters and photographs from her, as well as guilt and regret for his preoccupation with her rather than the safety of his men. Other soldiers in the platoon carry personal belongings that hold sentimental value or serve as a form of escapism from the harsh reality of war. Each item carries its own significance, reflecting the unique stories and personalities of the soldiers. The novel explores the psychological impact of war on the soldiers, delving into themes of fear, trauma, loss, and the blurred boundaries between truth and fiction. O'Brien masterfully blurs the line between fact and fiction, emphasizing the power of storytelling and memory as a means of understanding and coping with the horrors of war. The novel serves as a powerful testament to the resilience, camaraderie, and sacrifice of those who have served in armed conflicts, inviting readers to reflect on the enduring impact of war on individuals and society as a whole.

The setting of "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien is primarily during the Vietnam War, specifically focusing on the experiences of American soldiers deployed in Vietnam. The novel takes readers into the harsh and unforgiving environment of the war, transporting them to the jungles, rice paddies, and villages of Vietnam. The story unfolds in various locations, including the dense forests of Quang Ngai Province, the mountains near the border with Laos, and the riverside villages where the soldiers engage in combat and interact with the local Vietnamese population. O'Brien vividly describes the physical landscape, capturing the oppressive heat, the dense vegetation, and the constant sense of danger that permeates the air. In addition to the physical setting, the novel also explores the soldiers' mental and emotional landscapes. O'Brien delves into the interior worlds of the characters, portraying the weight of their experiences, the moral dilemmas they face, and the emotional burdens they carry. The setting becomes a reflection of the soldiers' internal struggles and serves as a backdrop for their personal transformations and battles with their own fears and demons. The temporal setting of the novel spans several years, from the early stages of the war to its aftermath. The narrative shifts back and forth in time, capturing the soldiers' memories, reflections, and the lasting impact of the war on their lives. O'Brien seamlessly weaves together past and present, blurring the boundaries of time and highlighting the enduring psychological and emotional effects of war.

The themes in "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien serve as a lens through which the characters' stories are told, offering insights into the complexities of war, memory, storytelling, and the weight of personal burdens. One of the central themes of the novel is the concept of storytelling and its power to shape and give meaning to our lives. O'Brien delves into the nature of truth and fiction, blurring the boundaries between fact and imagination. The characters use storytelling as a way to cope with the horrors of war, to remember their fallen comrades, and to make sense of their own experiences. This theme highlights the role of narrative in shaping our understanding of the world and the ways in which stories can serve as a form of catharsis and healing. Another significant theme explored in the book is the weight of personal burdens and the psychological toll of war. The characters in "The Things They Carried" carry physical objects that symbolize their emotional and psychological burdens, such as letters, photographs, and personal mementos. These tangible items serve as a metaphor for the intangible burdens they carry, including guilt, fear, and trauma. O'Brien explores the ways in which these burdens shape the characters' identities and influence their actions, highlighting the heavy price they pay for their service. Memory and its unreliability is another prominent theme in the novel. O'Brien examines how memories of war can be fragmented, distorted, and selectively recalled, blurring the line between reality and perception. The characters grapple with the weight of their memories, often haunted by the past and struggling to reconcile their experiences with their present lives. This theme underscores the enduring impact of war on the human psyche and the challenges of preserving and making sense of personal histories. Additionally, "The Things They Carried" delves into the themes of camaraderie, sacrifice, and the moral complexities of war. The bonds formed among the soldiers become a source of strength and support amidst the chaos and brutality of combat. The novel explores the sacrifices made by individuals for the collective good, as well as the ethical dilemmas they face in navigating the blurred lines between right and wrong in the midst of war.

Symbolism plays a significant role in the novel, allowing O'Brien to convey complex ideas and emotions through objects and events. For example, the weighty physical objects that the soldiers carry, such as Lieutenant Cross's letters from Martha, symbolize the burden of their emotional and psychological baggage. The pebble that Lieutenant Cross carries represents his longing for love and connection amidst the harsh reality of war. These symbols enrich the story , highlighting the themes of burdens, longing, and the conflict between love and duty. Imagery is skillfully employed throughout the book, creating vivid and sensory experiences for the reader. O'Brien's descriptions of the Vietnam War landscape, the soldiers' surroundings, and the visceral details of combat immerse the reader in the characters' experiences. Through powerful imagery, the author captures the sights, sounds, and smells of war, enhancing the emotional impact of the narrative. Irony is used to illuminate the contradictions and complexities of war. O'Brien employs situational irony to underscore the absurdities of war, such as the ironic death of Ted Lavender, who carries tranquilizers but is killed in a moment of vulnerability. Verbal irony is also present in the soldiers' dark humor and sarcastic remarks, revealing their coping mechanisms in the face of unimaginable circumstances. Metafiction, a prominent literary device in the novel, blurs the line between fiction and reality. O'Brien acknowledges the act of storytelling and explores the nature of truth, memory, and the power of narrative. For instance, O'Brien admits to fictionalizing certain elements of the story, blurring the boundaries between fact and imagination. This metafictional aspect challenges the reader's perception of truth and invites contemplation on the nature of storytelling and the role of fiction in representing the complexities of war. Other literary devices employed in the novel include repetition, foreshadowing, and paradox. Repetition is used to emphasize certain ideas and motifs, such as the repetition of the phrase "They carried" to highlight the soldiers' burdens. Foreshadowing hints at the characters' fates and adds tension to the narrative, while paradox presents the contradictions and ambiguities of war, such as the notion of killing for the sake of preserving life.

"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien has been adapted and represented in various forms of media, including film, theater, and music. These adaptations aim to capture the essence of the novel and bring its powerful themes and stories to a wider audience. One notable adaptation is the theatrical production of "The Things They Carried," which premiered in 2018. Adapted by Jim Stowell and directed by Sarah Diener, the play incorporates elements of storytelling, music, and multimedia to recreate the experiences of the soldiers in Vietnam. It utilizes the power of live performance to evoke the emotional intensity and psychological impact of war, engaging audiences in a visceral and immersive manner. Another notable representation of "The Things They Carried" is the 1990 short film adaptation directed by Peter Werner. This film, also titled "The Things They Carried," offers a visual interpretation of select stories from the book, bringing the characters and events to life on screen. Through the medium of film, the adaptation captures the visual imagery and the emotional depth of O'Brien's writing, allowing viewers to witness the harrowing realities of war. In addition to these direct adaptations, the influence of "The Things They Carried" can be seen in various songs, music videos, and other artistic expressions. Artists have drawn inspiration from the themes and stories of the novel to create their own works that reflect the experiences of soldiers in war. For example, Bruce Springsteen's song "The Wall" and Pearl Jam's song "I Am Mine" touch upon similar themes of memory, loss, and the weight of war that resonate with O'Brien's novel.

"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien has had a significant influence on literature, academia, and the public's understanding of war and its impact on soldiers. This powerful collection of interconnected short stories has left an indelible mark on readers and has contributed to important conversations about memory, truth, storytelling, and the human experience in times of conflict. One notable influence of "The Things They Carried" is its contribution to the genre of war literature. O'Brien's innovative blend of fact and fiction, his exploration of the subjective nature of truth, and his vivid portrayal of the psychological and emotional burdens carried by soldiers have inspired subsequent authors to tackle similar themes. The book's honest depiction of war's complexities and its emphasis on the human cost of conflict have shaped and influenced subsequent works of literature exploring the realities of war. Moreover, "The Things They Carried" has had a profound impact on the field of literary criticism and academia. Scholars and researchers have extensively studied O'Brien's storytelling techniques, narrative structure, and thematic depth. The book's exploration of memory, trauma, and the power of storytelling has provided rich material for analysis and has influenced the field of narrative theory. Beyond the literary sphere, "The Things They Carried" has resonated with a wide range of readers, including veterans, students, and the general public. Its poignant portrayal of the complexities of war and its lasting effects on individuals has prompted discussions on topics such as moral ambiguity, the dehumanizing nature of conflict, and the importance of empathy and understanding. The influence of "The Things They Carried" extends beyond literature and academia into popular culture. The book has been referenced in songs, films, and other forms of media, further cementing its status as a cultural touchstone. Its enduring relevance and impact demonstrate the power of storytelling to illuminate the human condition and provoke meaningful reflection on the consequences of war.

1. "The Things They Carried" has received widespread critical acclaim since its publication. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1991 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in the same year. 2. Over the years, "The Things They Carried" has remained a staple in literature courses and reading lists across the United States. It is frequently taught in high schools and universities, and its impact on readers has endured. The book's exploration of war, memory, and the power of storytelling continues to resonate with new generations, ensuring its place as a significant work of American literature. 3. In 2018, "The Things They Carried" was adapted into a feature film directed by Rupert Sanders. The movie, starring Tom Hardy and Tye Sheridan, aimed to bring O'Brien's powerful storytelling to the big screen. While the adaptation faced some challenges and has not been widely released, it is a testament to the enduring appeal and cinematic potential of the book's themes and narratives.

"The Things They Carried" is an essential work to write an essay about due to its profound exploration of the human experience in times of war. Through its vivid storytelling and introspective narratives, the book delves into the complexities of the Vietnam War, the weight of personal burdens, the power of memory, and the impact of storytelling itself. By examining the novel, students can gain a deeper understanding of the psychological and emotional toll of war on soldiers, the ethical dilemmas they face, and the enduring effects on their lives. The book raises thought-provoking questions about the nature of truth, the unreliability of memory, and the ways in which storytelling can shape our perceptions and heal our wounds. Moreover, "The Things They Carried" serves as a powerful example of how literature can humanize and give voice to the experiences of those who have served in conflict zones. It provides a platform for discussion on war literature, trauma, empathy, and the power of narrative. Ultimately, studying and analyzing this work allows students to engage with important social, historical, and psychological themes, fostering critical thinking and empathy towards those impacted by war.

"They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment." "He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole." "But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world" "I survived, but it's not a happy ending."

1. Climo, J. (2005). Truth and fiction in Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home and The Things They Carried. Modern Fiction Studies, 51(1), 186-208. 2. Friedman, L. (2013). ‘Dancing the Soul Back Home’: Trauma, storytelling, and truth in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities, 25(1/2), 273-296. 3. Heberle, R. (2017). War, memory, and the inescapability of fiction in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. College Literature, 44(2), 225-245. 4. Herzog, T. (2002). Memory, history, and trauma in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 43(3), 259-277. 5. Kaplan, S. (2016). Postmodernism, metafiction, and Tim O'Brien's Vietnam War stories. In The Philosophy of War Films (pp. 135-154). University Press of Kentucky. 6. Kaplan, S. (2017). The Things They Carried: Tim O'Brien's personal debt to Hemingway. The Hemingway Review, 36(1), 71-85. 7. McWilliams, J. (2015). Intimations of mortality: Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods. In The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Vietnam War (pp. 145-160). Cambridge University Press. 8. O’Brien, T. (1990). The things they carried. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 9. Stenberg, P. (2009). Lyric narrative and the war text: Tim O'Brien's "Speaking of Courage" and "In the Field" as poetic rewritings of The Things They Carried. Contemporary Literature, 50(3), 497-527. 10. Wood, M. (2000). Refiguring the Vietnam veteran: (Dis) locating subjectivity in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 41(2), 107-121.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried

Analysis of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 26, 2021

In the short story cycle The Things They Carried (1990), Tim O’Brien cemented his reputation as one of the most powerful chroniclers of the Vietnam War, joining the conversation alongside Philip Caputo ( A Rumor of War ), Michael Herr ( Dispatches ), David Halberstam ( The Best and the Brightest ), and the poet Bruce Weigl ( Song of Napalm ), among others. Comprising 22 pieces—some little more than vignettes, others more “traditional” stories—the collection details the experiences of the soldier Tim O’Brien, who returns to his native Minnesota after a tour of duty in Vietnam. In his subsequent role as author, O’Brien records his recollections in a false memoir of sorts as a way of reconstructing the war’s elusive “truth.” O’Brien’s goal in The Things They Carried, he tells Michael Coffey, “was to write something utterly convincing but without any rules as to what’s real and what’s made up. I forced myself to try to invent a new form. I had never invented form before” (60).

“In the Field” follows Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his platoon of 17 remaining men as they search a Vietnamese muck field for Kiowa, a lost comrade. Cross, who figures prominently in several of the book’s pieces—including the eponymous “The Things They Carried,” the collection’s most anthologized story—feels tremendous guilt over Kiowa’s death, not the least because the previous evening, just before an ambush, Cross refused to disobey orders and to move his men to higher, and therefore safer, ground. Kiowa, buried when a fellow soldier inadvertently gave away the platoon’s position to the enemy, was a popular soldier. Out of respect for their fallen comrade, the men dutifully wade through waist-deep sewage searching for his remains; they sustain themselves with a morbid sense of humor, making light of the situation in order to quell their fear of random, sudden death at the hands of a faceless enemy. Cross quickly realizes that he is ill suited for the military, having been shipped to Vietnam after joining the officer training corps in college only to be with friends and to collect a few college credits. “[Cross] did not care one way or the other about the war,” O’Brien intones, “and he had no desire to command, and even after all these months in the bush, all the days and nights, even then he did not know enough to keep his men out of a shit field” (168).

Tim O’Brien/The Austin Chronicle

War is a great leveler in O’Brien’s fiction. In the field where Cross and his men search for Kiowa, “The filth seemed to erase identities, transforming the men into identical copies of a single soldier, which was exactly how Jimmy Cross had been trained to treat them, as interchangeable units of command” (163). The young lieutenant, however, suspends his humanity only with great difficulty. Ruminating on Kiowa’s death, he imagines writing a letter to the soldier’s father before deciding that “no apologies were necessary, because in fact it was one of those freak things, and the war was full of freaks, and nothing could ever change it anyway” (176). Cross’s rationalization may absolve him (at least in part) of his guilt over Kiowa’s death, though it is also a tacit admission of his lack of control over the war’s daily life-and-death struggles. Cross’s desire to organize the details of Kiowa’s death in his own mind is an extension of O’Brien’s attempt in The Things They Carried to construct a coherent narrative that finds the essential truth of war (a notion that the author confirms in the ironically titled “How to Tell a True War Story” which acts as an interpretive key to his recollections).

Upon the discovery of Kiowa’s body, the men properly mourn the loss of their fellow soldier, though “they also felt a kind of giddiness, a secret joy, because they were alive, and because even the rain was preferable to being sucked under a shit field, and because it was all a matter of luck and happenstance” (175). Cross, yearning for war’s end, imagines himself on a golf course in his New Jersey hometown, free of the burden of leading men to their deaths. O’Brien examines the onus of responsibility often, and in the related story “Field Trip,” which details the author’s return to Vietnam two decades later to the field where Kiowa died, O’Brien finds a world barely recognizable as the one he left behind. “The field remains, but in a form much different from what O’Brien remembers, smaller now, and full of light,” Patrick A. Smith writes of O’Brien’s visit. “The air is soundless, the ghosts are missing, and the farmers who now tend the field go back to work after stealing a curious glance in his direction. The war is absent, except in O’Brien’s memory” (107). But it is memory, O’Brien makes clear, that supersedes experience and haunts soldiers long after the shooting has stopped.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Coffey, Michael. “Tim O’Brien: Inventing a New Form Helps the Author Talk about War, Memory, and Storytelling.” Publishers Weekly, 16 February 1990, pp. 60–61. O’Brien, Tim. “In the Field.” In The Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Smith, Patrick A. Tim O’Brien: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2005.

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“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien: Analysis

Published in 1990, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a semi-autobiographical novel that draws on the author’s experiences in the Vietnam War.

Introduction: “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien

Table of Contents

Published in 1990, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a semi-autobiographical novel that draws on the author’s experiences in the Vietnam War. The story follows a platoon of American soldiers grappling with the physical and emotional challenges of war. Through evocative descriptions of the soldiers’ gear and internal struggles, O’Brien crafts a haunting and introspective narrative that delves into the complexities of human nature under duress. Hailed as a classic of contemporary American literature, “The Things They Carried” is lauded for its poignant portrayal of war’s human cost and its innovative blurring of factual and fictional elements.

Main Events in “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien

• Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his platoon carry various physical and emotional burdens as they navigate the realities of war in Vietnam.
• Cross obsesses over his unrequited love for Martha, a college student back home, and realizes he needs to focus on his duties as a leader.
• The platoon comes under enemy fire and suffers casualties, including Ted Lavender, a young soldier who had been heavily medicated to cope with the stress of war.
• The platoon burns down a village and kills a water buffalo, further revealing the moral ambiguity and psychological toll of war.
• O’Brien introduces the concept of “story truth,” exploring the role of memory and imagination in shaping individual and collective experiences of war.
• Kiowa, one of Cross’s closest companions, is killed in action, and the soldiers are forced to grapple with the fragility of life and the weight of loss.
• O’Brien reflects on the power of storytelling to convey emotional truths and provide a sense of catharsis for those who have experienced trauma.
• The soldiers participate in a night patrol and encounter a young Vietnamese soldier, further highlighting the complexities and human costs of war.
• The platoon is sent on a mission to retrieve the body of a soldier who has been killed, prompting reflections on the value and meaning of sacrifice.
• The story ends with Cross burning the letters and photographs he had carried with him, symbolizing his commitment to moving on and living in the present.

Literary Devices in “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien

• Allusion : A reference to a well-known person, place, event, or literary work. Example: The title “The Things They Carried” alludes to the physical and emotional burdens borne by soldiers, resonating with the broader literary theme of characters facing hardship.
• Ambiguity : The presence of multiple meanings or interpretations within a text. Example: Whether the killing of the baby water buffalo was an act of cruelty or mercy is left ambiguous, highlighting the moral complexities of war.
• Foreshadowing : A hint or clue about what will happen later in the story. Example: Ted Lavender’s unnecessary death, so early in the narrative, subtly foreshadows the tragedies awaiting other members of the platoon.
• Hyperbole : An exaggeration used for emphasis or effect. Example: Describing the soldiers’ load as “humping…at least 20 pounds” doesn’t refer to literal weight but conveys the overwhelming burdens they bear.
• Imagery : Descriptive language that appeals to the senses, creating a vivid mental picture. Example: O’Brien’s evocative details of the Vietnamese landscape (“sun-filled paddies…tall, swaying grass”) transport the reader into the soldiers’ environment.
• Irony : A situation that is the opposite of what is expected, often for humorous or poignant effect. Example: Jimmy Cross’s preoccupation with his unrequited love for Martha ironically distracts him from the deadly serious reality of leading his men.
• Metaphor : A comparison between two things without using “like” or “as.” Example: O’Brien compares the emotional weight the soldiers carry to literal objects like “clamshells on their backs.”
• Motif : A recurring element or image that contributes to the overall theme. Example: The recurring descriptions of the physical things the soldiers carry highlight the theme of how war’s burdens extend far beyond mere equipment.
• Onomatopoeia : The use of words that sound like what they describe. Example: O’Brien uses “whoosh” and “whap” to mimic the sounds of gunfire, bringing the reader closer to the battlefield experience.
• Personification : Giving human qualities to non-human things. Example: O’Brien refers to the land itself as “the enemy,” making war an overwhelming, inescapable force.
• Repetition : Repeating a word, phrase, or sentence for emphasis. Example: The repetitive listing of everything the soldiers carry emphasizes the overwhelming nature of their combined physical and emotional burdens.
• Simile : A comparison using “like” or “as.” Example: The soldiers’ movement through a field is likened to “the wind against wheat,” highlighting their vulnerability.
• Symbolism : The use of objects, images, or actions to represent abstract ideas. Example: The young Vietnamese soldier killed on the trail symbolizes the human cost of war on both sides of the conflict.
• Tone : The author’s attitude towards the subject matter. Example: O’Brien’s tone shifts between wistful, melancholy, and starkly realistic, mirroring the soldiers’ emotional experiences.
• Verisimilitude : The appearance of being true or real. Example: O’Brien’s blending of actual events with invented stories creates a sense of verisimilitude, making the emotional impact of the narrative even more powerful.

Characterization in “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien

Absolutely! Here’s a characterization analysis for some of the key figures in “The Things They Carried,” along with specific supporting references from the story:

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross

• Conflict: Torn between his duty as a leader and his obsessive love for Martha, a girl back home who represents an idealized escape (“letters were full of love” – ‘Love’).
• Motivation: Desperately seeks a sense of normalcy and control amidst the chaos of war, clinging to the illusion of Martha as a lifeline.
• Evolution: The death of Ted Lavender forces him to confront his misplaced priorities (“He hated himself” – ‘Love’). His burning of Martha’s letters symbolizes a shift towards commitment to the present and his responsibility to his men.

Tim O’Brien (the narrator)

• Meta-character: O’Brien blurs the lines between the author and a fictionalized version of himself within the narrative.
• Role: Serves as both a participant in the events and a reflective storyteller examining the nature of memory and truth (“And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story…” – ‘Good Form’).
• Motivation: Seeks to process his own war trauma through storytelling, exploring the emotional truths often obscured in factual accounts.
• Morality and Compassion: Represents a grounding force of decency amidst war’s dehumanizing effects. (“Kiowa, who was a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament…” – ‘The Things They Carried’).
• Symbolic Death: His sinking into the ‘muck’ after a mortar attack exemplifies the senseless loss of innocence in war.
• Impact: Kiowa’s death leaves a void in the platoon, symbolizing the erosion of compassion and morality necessary for survival in conflict.

Norman Bowker

• Invisible Wounds: Embodies the lingering psychological trauma of war even after returning home. His lack of tangible injuries underscores this. (“…the ache in his heart was worse than any belly wound” – ‘Speaking of Courage’).
• Cyclic Narrative: His story, told in ‘Speaking of Courage’, highlights the suffocating impact of unprocessed trauma.
• Symbolism: His eventual suicide tragically emphasizes what can happen when the ‘weight’ of memory and experience becomes unbearable.
• Medic’s Perspective: Rat offers a glimpse into the physical and emotional toll of treating horrific injuries (“…Rat Kiley was crying” – ‘Friends’).
• Dark Humor: His tendency towards exaggeration and grim jokes serves as a coping mechanism for the relentless suffering he witnesses.
• Breaking Point: The shooting of his own foot, while self-inflicted, signifies the psychological breaking point a medic can reach in the war’s intensity.

Additional Notes:

• Nuance: O’Brien depicts his characters with complexity; no one is purely “good” or “bad.” They are humanized by their flaws and moments of vulnerability.
• The Power of What’s Carried: Each soldier’s physical and emotional burdens define their experiences. These burdens are often unique, leading to both camaraderie and a sense of isolation.

Major Themes in “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien

Writing style in “the things they carried” by tim o’brien.

• Blurring Fact and Fiction: O’Brien merges personal experiences with invented elements, challenging the notion of absolute truth in war narratives. This creates his unique notion of “story-truth” ( ‘How to Tell a True War Story’).
• Visceral and Introspective: O’Brien combines vivid descriptions of the war’s physical realities with reflections on soldiers’ inner emotional turmoil, creating a deeply affecting portrayal of their experiences.
• Repetition: Repeated phrases and descriptions, like the listing of the things the soldiers carry, emphasize both the physical weight and the psychological toll of war.
• Imagery: O’Brien’s powerful sensory descriptions bring the Vietnamese landscape, the soldiers’ equipment, and moments of violence to life, immersing the reader in the story’s world.
• Metaphor and Symbolism: Comparisons like intangible burdens to “humps” and “clamshells” ( ‘The Things They Carried’) deepen the portrayal of the soldiers’ emotional weight. Objects like Kiowa’s New Testament symbolize hope and faith amidst despair.
• Honesty and Authenticity: Despite his fictionalizations, O’Brien aims to convey the emotional core of war’s impact, admitting the impossibility of a purely objective account (‘Good Form’).

Literary Theories and Interpretation of “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien

Questions and thesis statements about “the things they carried” by tim o’brien.

Question 1: How does O’Brien’s blurring of fact and fiction impact the reader’s understanding of war and its emotional consequences?

• Thesis Statement: In “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien’s blending of personal experience with invented elements destabilizes traditional war narratives, emphasizing the subjective nature of memory and highlighting the emotional resonance of “story-truth” over factual accounts.

Question 2: How does the motif of physical burdens symbolize the psychological toll of war in “The Things They Carried”?

• Thesis Statement: O’Brien’s detailed catalogs of the soldiers’ equipment evolve into powerful metaphors for intangible burdens like fear, grief, and guilt, demonstrating the interwoven nature of physical and psychological hardship faced by soldiers in combat.

Question 3: In what ways does O’Brien challenge traditional notions of heroism in his portrayal of the soldiers in “The Things They Carried”?

• Thesis Statement: “The Things They Carried” subverts conventional depictions of battlefield valor by emphasizing the quiet courage of endurance, the moral complexities of survival, and the vulnerability hidden within the facade of stoic soldiers.

Question 4: How does “The Things They Carried” function as a form of trauma narrative, and what does it reveal about the lasting psychological impact of war?

• Thesis Statement: Through fragmented narratives, metafictional reflections, and depictions of the soldiers’ coping mechanisms, “The Things They Carried” reveals the profound and often unresolved legacy of trauma carried by those who have experienced the horrors of war.

Question 5: To what extent does O’Brien’s portrayal of the Vietnamese people and culture in “The Things They Carried” perpetuate or challenge colonialist perspectives?

• Thesis Statement: “The Things They Carried” offers a limited and often stereotyped view of the Vietnamese experience. A postcolonial analysis examines how this portrayal reinforces or subverts power dynamics and contributes to the otherizing of the Vietnamese people in the American war narrative.

Short Question-Answer “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien

Suggested readings: “the things they carried” by tim o’brien, scholarly articles.

• Bar-Yosef, Eitan. “War and Truth: ‘The Things They Carried’ from the Postmodern/Trauma Perspective.” Style , vol. 35, no. 4, 2001, pp. 645-664.
• Briggum, Sue, et al. “‘You’d Have to Carry a List’: Tim O’Brien and the Vietnam War Story.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal , vol. 46, no. 4, 2013, pp. 147-62.
• Heberle, Mark A. A Trauma Artist: Tim O’Brien and the Fiction of Vietnam . University of Iowa Press,‌ 2001.
• Calloway, Catherine. Tim O’Brien and the Vietnam War: Rewriting the World . Twayne, 1996.
• McDaniel, Tim. The Limits of a Vietnam War Literature: Stories by Tim O’Brien . Susquehanna University Press, 1996.
• Searle, William. Tim O’Brien . Twayne Publishers, 1991.
• SparkNotes: “The Things They Carried” Summary & Analysis. [invalid URL removed]
• LitCharts: “The Things They Carried” https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-things-they-carried
• The Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University: Tim O’Brien collection (includes manuscript drafts, letters, and other archival materials relating to the author and his work). [invalid URL removed]

Related posts:

• The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe
• “The Use of Force” by William Carlos Williams
• “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison
• “A Small, Good Thing” by Raymond Carver

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Ransom Center Magazine

The textual “truth” behind Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried

June 20, 2017 - John Young

Tim O’Brien’s  The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The book depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer. The Harry Ransom Center holds the author’s archive .

Two of the most poignant stories in The Things They Carried are “On the Rainy River” and “Field Trip.” “Rainy River” portrays a young O’Brien, weeks removed from his college graduation, leaving his home in Worthington, Minnesota, for a fishing outpost on the Canadian border, agonizing over whether to report for Army induction or to live as a draft dodger. In “Field Trip,” O’Brien returns to Vietnam many years after his tour of duty as a foot soldier and radio operator, now with his ten-year-old daughter, Kathleen, as he seeks some measure of peace from the traumatic memories of a close comrade’s death. Because these stories are removed from the daily realities of the war, they tend to be more accessible to O’Brien’s audience. But in the original version of Things , readers would have turned the page to discover that neither of these stories is “true.”

Throughout The Things They Carried , O’Brien famously distinguishes between “happening-truth,” or an accurate and verifiable account of historical events, and “story truth,” or readers’ genuine experience of the story, even if the details are invented. The book blurs the lines between fiction and truth even further in its dedication to a group of soldiers who turn out to be fictional characters throughout the rest of the book, and in the appearance of “Tim O’Brien” in several stories, a figure who seems very similar to, but not quite identical with, the author. Many readers, and most of my students over many years of teaching the book, take the circumstances of “Rainy River” and “Field Trip” to be at least more or less true (in the conventional sense): they assume that O’Brien made some sort of trip away from his family while deciding whether to honor his draft notice, even if not precisely the one portrayed here, and that O’Brien and his daughter went back to Vietnam years after the war, even if, again, the “real” version of that event differs from its fictional representation. (That is, they take these stories to be relatively conventional instances of fiction based on episodes from the author’s life, even if contained within a much more complex metafictional narrative.)

In fact, while O’Brien did agonize about serving in a war he vehemently opposed, he never made any trip like the one in “Rainy River;” his worries played out entirely in Worthington. And, while O’Brien did return to Vietnam in 1994, accompanied by his then girlfriend—this trip is the subject of his well-known piece for The New York Times Magazine , “The Vietnam in Me”—his daughter did not go with him, because he had no children. In the typescript for the book that O’Brien sent to Houghton Mifflin, the chapter titled “Good Form,” which discusses O’Brien’s interactions with the (ostensibly real) veteran Norman Bowker, also included a long passage disavowing any happening-truth in “Rainy River” or “Field Trip,” or in various other events in the book, such as O’Brien’s empathetic imagination of the Vietnamese life he has ended by shooting an enemy soldier on patrol, or a postwar visit from his former company commander, Jimmy Cross. Here is a portion of that early version (I have retained the cross-throughs as they appear in the copy at the Harry Ransom Center):

I don’t have a daughter named Kathleen. I don’t have a daughter. I don’t have children. To my knowledge, at least, I never killed anyone. Jimmy Cross never visited me at my house in Massachusetts, because of course Jimmy Cross does not exist in the world of objects, and never did. He’s purely invented, like Martha, and like Kiowa or Mitchell Sanders and all the others. I never ran way to the Rainy River. I wanted to—badly—but I didn’t .

I came across this typescript during a month-long fellowship at the Ransom Center, poring through as many of O’Brien’s papers as I could, and have written about it more extensively in How to Revise a True War Story: Tim O’Brien’s Process of Textual Production (University of Iowa Press, 2017). Ever since my first encounter with this aspect of O’Brien’s papers, I have been fascinated by the question of how readers would interact differently with the book if passages like this one (and another deleted chapter, “The Real Mary Anne,” which takes the opposite tack of insisting that the heroine of “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” was, against the odds, an actual person) had been retained. Or, to put that counterfactual question another way: how might O’Brien’s real readers have responded to the version(s) of The Things They Carried that could have been published, but weren’t? We can start to think through those questions by looking back further than the typescript, to the magazine versions of several chapters that appeared before the book.

O’Brien’s Magazine Readers

While the relationship between fiction and truth is questioned elsewhere in The Things They Carried for readers to at least reasonably doubt the veracity of stories like “Rainy River” and “Field Trip,” some of O’Brien’s original readers would have had no such contextual cues, as they found these stories in magazines. “Rainy River” appeared first in two periodicals: Macalester Today , O’Brien’s college alumni magazine, and Playboy , which paid $5,000, the largest magazine check of O’Brien’s career to that point. Macalester Today heightens the sense of autobiographical reality with its subheading, “A writer remembers the summer of 1968, when he found himself in desperate trouble. A month after graduating from Macalester, he was drafted to serve in Vietnam.” But O’Brien’s own introduction to the story immediately undercuts this impression, as he explains his choice to use a character who shares his name but is otherwise “almost entirely invented”: “Personally, I can’t see that it matters in the least—what counts is the artifact, the work itself—but nonetheless, with this book in particular, people seem interested in knowing what’s ‘real’ and what isn’t. As with all fiction, the answer is simple: if you believe it, it’s real; if you don’t, it isn’t.” O’Brien here deftly sidesteps the question of what’s “real,” at least as most of his readers would understand it, or why they might be especially concerned about such issues with this book, for an answer that bleeds into his more developed sense of “story truth” in the book. But given the context of an alumni magazine, we might easily assume readers who are at least relatively predisposed to take the events in “Rainy River” as closer to “real” than they are, based not only on the question of whether they “believe it,” but also on the types of stories one expects to find in this venue.

“Field Trip” appeared in the August 1990 issue of McCall’s , part of the magazine’s “Summer Fiction Special,” with a readership presumably attuned to the father-daughter relationship as much as the memories of wartime trauma. Indeed, the pull quote on the story’s first page highlights O’Brien’s supposed daughter as if she were the story’s central consciousness: “Kathleen was only ten, but her father wanted her to understand Vietnam, the place where he’d lost so much, and to witness what it was he’d find there.” McCall’s readers, had they encountered a version of the book with the passage above from “Good Form” intact, might have been especially surprised, even dismayed, to discover Kathleen’s fictionality. Of course, that’s often the point in The Things They Carried , as in the famous ending of “How to Tell a True War Story,” when the reader learns that the savage killing of a baby water buffalo was an overtly fictional episode. Identifying with O’Brien as a father, and/or with his young daughter’s attempt to make sense of a war she doesn’t understand, only to have the fictional rug pulled out, seems on its surface like the same kind of effect that the book goes to considerable lengths to create in its other chapters.

So, why did O’Brien remove these elements of The Things They Carried ? That is, why did he render the narrative less overtly metafictional, and how does this revision impact readers of the editions actually published? Part of the answer is that O’Brien’s editor at Houghton Mifflin, Camille Hykes, felt the collection would be stronger without its tricks exposed quite so much. “Why should the magician pull up his sleeve & tell us—Look, this is where the birds come from—when really, deep down, we knew it anyway?” she wrote to O’Brien. And O’Brien himself clearly decided this version of the book would more subtly, and more effectively, generate its metafictional effects.

But I’m not so sure. Much of the real power of The Things They Carried , for me, comes precisely from the process of building emotional investments in its characters, and then rebuilding those relationships on different terms once we have been told, in no uncertain terms, that the “people” we have come to care about don’t “exist in the world of objects.” We probably knew it all along, as Hykes suggests, but the best magic tricks, after all, are the ones where you know it’s an illusion but still can’t quite figure out what’s really “true.”

John K. Young is a professor of English at Marshall University and author of Black Writers, White Publishers (2006); Publishing Blackness , co-edited with George Hutchinson (2013), and How to Revise a True War Story (2017). His fellowship at the Ransom Center was supported by the Norman Mailer Endowed Fund.

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Jewish 19th-century ‘Rembrandt’ still…

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Jewish 19th-century ‘rembrandt’ still relevant 200 years after his birth.

“Do come to my atelier one of these days, and I will show you my latest creations. But on the Sabbath my studio is closed,” Israëls (1824-1911), who had a strong Jewish education including studying the Talmud, told one visitor. He was said to have promised his dying father that he would observe the Sabbath.

Despite his Orthodox upbringing, Israels didn’t turn in earnest to Jewish subjects until his upper 60s.

His nearly square-sized 1903 painting “Jewish Wedding,” in the collection of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, shows a groom in a top hat placing a ring on a bride’s finger—both of them draped in a tallit.

He depicted a peddler in Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter in his “A Son of the Ancient Race” (c. 1889), one version of which can be found at the Jewish Museum in New York. The subject is “a humble member of his own religion,” the museum notes.

In his 1898 painting “Saul and David,” in the collection of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk, Israels suggested the landscape of Jerusalem in a view in the background between an open curtain, as the future Jewish king plays the harp to calm the incumbent royal.

Abby Schwartz, curatorial consultant and director emerita at the Skirball Museum in Cincinnati, wrote her master’s thesis on Israels.

“One way to describe him is as the 19th-century Rembrandt. He was a master of light, and one of the few artists of his generation to focus on people rather than landscape,” Schwartz told JNS. “His scenes of everyday life were masterful—elevating the mundane to the spiritual.”

Israels was one of the founders of the late 19th-century Hague School, which focused on everyday people and landscapes. After living in Amsterdam and Paris, Israels settled in the Dutch fishing village of Zandvoort, drawn to the sea and fishermen.

“He was learned as a Jew, and his domestic scenes reflect a reverence for traditional women’s work—sewing, mending, spinning, caring for children,” Schwartz said. “I believe his legacy survives as a painter, who was famous in his own time and whose works were widely known in the form of prints of many of his important paintings.”

Schwartz noted that Israels painted several pictures of Jewish scholars studying, including one of a Jewish scribe that she called “deeply evocative.”

“He’s complicated,” she said. “He was careful to describe himself as a Dutch artist, not a Jewish artist.”

Ori Soltes, a Georgetown University professor, author and former director of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, told JNS that artwork by Israels “will always be aesthetically relevant and relevant with regard to his Jewish and other subjects and to the ongoing and delightful complication of defining ‘Jewish art.’”

‘Complex tangle’

By age 16, Israels—who grew up studying the Torah and Talmud—was training in Amsterdam with the portrait painter Jan Kruseman.

“He commented on how Rembrandt’s work enveloped him—in particular, Rembrandt’s Jewish beggars—and he was also drawn to the Judenstraat with its gray-bearded Jews, barrels of fish, piles of fruit and its sky,” said Soltes, referring to “Jew Street.”

“Israels carried localized anecdote to universal human statement,” Soltes said. “He lived among the fishing folk of Zandvoort in the late 1850s, where he became more conscious of nature, of the luminescence of the sky reflecting the sea, of the unadorned drama of life that is intimate with severity, sacred and spiritual in its simplicity.”

The artist’s peers praised “Son of the Ancient Race”—“not its Judaism, but its humanity, and yet the subject is clearly Jewish and was recognized at the time as such,” Soltes said. “His 1903 ‘Jewish Wedding’ carries a genre subject into the dappled, sketch-like style of Impressionism that pushes us into the 20th century.”

It is possible that “a specifically Jewish sensibility” propelled Israels toward Impressionism and made him tower over his contemporaries in Holland, and “that the works Israels created would not have been what they became without a Jewish element in his consciousness,” Soltes told JNS. “But we cannot be certain of this.”

But he noted that Rembrandt, who was not Jewish, painted many Jewish subjects, including prominent Jews, a “Jewish bride” and Dutch synagogues, two centuries earlier.

“Would we term such works ‘Jewish’—but only in terms of subject and not in terms of the artist’s identity—and would we term Jewish subjects by Israels more ‘Jewish’ because the artist was a Jew?” Soltes said. “What then of his works for which the subject is not Jewish? He leaves us caught in a complex tangle of definitional threads.”

Great ‘rabbi of painting’

The artist’s connection to Zionism was also complicated, as Gilya Gerda Schmidt, professor emerita of religious studies and director emerita of the Judaic studies program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, wrote in a chapter devoted to Israels in her 2003 book, The Art and Artists of the Fifth Zionist Congress, 1901.

Six of Israels’ works were included in the exhibition, which Martin Buber organized, at the 1901 congress in Basel, Switzerland.

In a chapter devoted to Israels, Gerda Schmidt variously refers to the artist as the “great ‘rabbi’ of painting,” the “Altmeister of Dutch art” (old master) and “the Jewish Rembrandt.”

In 1898, Theodor Herzl visited Israels and tried to interest him in the Zionist movement, according to the book. However, according to some scholars, a Zionist publication that stated that Israels had contributed financially to the cause had to issue a correction.

Gerda Schmidt records a memory of Israels’ during a visit to Tangiers in Morocco, during which he entered a home on a whim.

After climbing a staircase, the then septuagenarian artist saw a curtain moving back and forth and froze “indecisively and in thought,” fearing that if he entered a room, he wouldn’t know what would happen next.

“I heard, to my great surprise, a voice ask in Hebrew, ‘Mamevakeshecha?’ (What do you want?),” Israels said. “I entered and said, ‘Shalom Adoni, shalom aleichem. Anochi Yehudi mi eretz Hollandi’ (Hello sir, I am a Jew from Holland).”

Entering the dark room, Israels saw a “long table with crooked legs,” upon which lay a long piece of parchment that hung over both edges. “Behind the table sat the Torah scribe, with both arms on the parchment, and turned his regal countenance towards me,” Israels recalled.

“The head seemed much too large for the body that was hidden behind the long table,” he added. “It was a magnificent face, fine and transparent, pale like alabaster; wrinkles, small and large, surrounded his small eyes and his large, crooked hawk’s nose.”

That sofer, with his “black cap” and “large, yellowish-white beard” that flowed over the parchment, inspired one of Israels’s great paintings, “Jewish Scribe” (1902), in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo in the Netherlands.

To read more content visit www.jns.org

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“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien Essay

Introduction, war as the central theme of “the things they carried”, works cited.

The main theme of “The Things They Carried” by O’Brien is the events that were happening during the Vietnam War. The war does not revolve around things such as heroism or tactics. It is characterized by boredom and terrific moments. Apart from that, it is a backdrop that defines the force against the lives of the soldiers.

O’Brien emphasizes the fact that it is not easy to generalize what is entailed in war. The short story addresses different themes, but war is among its central topics. Tim O’Brien is among the characters that play essential roles in the story. There is a close connection between OBrien and the theme of war. This essay will discuss the relationship between O’Brien as a character and the war as the central theme of “The Things They Carried.”

O’Brien focuses on telling war stories. TTTC is a work of fiction. Throughout the story, there is an interplay between fact and fiction.

O’Brien tells the story authoritatively because he was there during the actual war. That is the connection between O’Brien’s biography and the story’s central theme that was mentioned in the above paragraph of the essay. The examples of it in “The Things They Carried” are numerous. Regarding the Vietnam War, no one can tell the story better than a person like O’Brien, who witnessed the action. Assuming a position of authority, O’Brien goes ahead to define the parameters characteristic of a true war story.

He says that a true war story lacks morals. It never instructs nor encourages virtue and does not even suggest models of the right human behavior nor restrain men from doing the things they always do.

T. O’Brien does not agree with the thesis that war stories are vehicles for restitution or change. He represents war as hell, mystery, terror, and discovery.

He adds that it is a nasty and thrilling experience that makes people men and also leaves them dead. He says that the irreconcilable opposites need to be together because their oxymoronic togetherness articulates the reality of war. He writes that the recollection of the death of Curt Lemon is possible when the ‘surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which represents the hard and exact truth is seemed’ (O’Brien 78).

The above quote shows that O’Brien deals with the challenge of representation, the weakness of language to convey meaning, flavor, boredom, and the feelings of war. Inscription and re-inscription are the only ways through which he hopes to pass the message on the truth of war appropriately. That is what makes the theme of war in the story a circular and repetitive idea.

For every assertion of truth, it is essential to qualify and represent it for it to be considered authentic. O’Brien creates a situation that conveys the message that no heroism or morality is derived from the experiences of war. It is the source of guilt and shame only. O’Brien presents war as a disembodied presence with a life of its own, where deadly equipment like napalm and white phosphorus undergo a magical transformation into morally acceptable objects of beauty.

He portrays astuteness to the extent that he acknowledges the fact that describing such destruction as beautiful is in itself ugly truth. However, the justification for the truth bases on the role the truth plays.

Ugly truths like the fascination that war begets are bound to be expressed, although in expressing such truths, war is anesthetized and domesticated. The absolute moral indifference that O’Brien relates to bombing raids and artillery barrages is only defendable if the attacks or bombardments have no human agencies behind them (O’Brien 80).

The fact that there are always human agencies behind war and the eloquent portrayal by O’Brien that war maims and kills makes it challenging to uphold an opinion of the moral or aesthetic perspective of war. The unleashing of such negative impacts of war trivializes any morality in war. In presenting an alternative moral view, O’Brien perpetrates a mythic fascination with the horrific occurrences associated with war.

O’Brien says that although war is hell, it is comprised of many other contradictions. A firefight is followed by a mysterious experience of surviving the ordeal.

He says that war is ambiguous and concurs with a story told by Sanders of men who heard things in the forest during the war. He, therefore, concludes by saying that a true war story does not tell the absolute truth. He recalls the circumstances that led to the death of Lemon as he smiled and talked but was killed within a second.

His body was thrown into a tree, and they were instructed to retrieve it with Jensen. O’Brien says that true war stories are identifiable by the questions that follow the war. He retells the story of a man who has nearly killed a grenade as he tried to protect his friends. His message is that war stories that seem true never actually happened.

This essay analyzes Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”. It is a compelling short story of the Vietnam War. In summary, war is its central theme, as shown in numerous researches. This paper on “The Things They Carried” aims to connect O’Brien’s biography with the main issue of the plot.

In the story, different characters are used to express various themes, such as emotional and physical burdens, among others. However, the issue of war runs throughout the story. O Brien is himself one of the characters in the story and tells the story of the war as a person who witnessed it. He is closely connected with the theme of war in the story, such that without him, the issue cannot be brought out so clearly.

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried . New York: Broadway Books, 1998. Print.

• Chicago (A-D)
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IvyPanda. (2018, June 21). “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-things-they-carried-by-tim-obrien/

"“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien." IvyPanda , 21 June 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/the-things-they-carried-by-tim-obrien/.

IvyPanda . (2018) '“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien'. 21 June.

IvyPanda . 2018. "“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien." June 21, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-things-they-carried-by-tim-obrien/.

1. IvyPanda . "“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien." June 21, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-things-they-carried-by-tim-obrien/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien." June 21, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-things-they-carried-by-tim-obrien/.

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Civil engineering student aims to connect construction and community

Joseph cortas is a fourth-year student enrolled in the ceas accend program.

Ever since he was a child,  Joseph Cortas  was enthralled by the energy of construction sites.

Joseph Cortas, CEAS Class of 2025.

While his initial fascination centered on large trucks, his childhood interest sent him down a path of professional and personal discovery. 

Today, Cortas is a fourth-year student concurrently pursuing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering through the  ACCEND accelerated degree program  at the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering and Applied Science. 

The recipient of the  Cincinnati Presidential Scholarship , the Structural Engineering Institute Student Scholarship, the  CEAS Undergraduate Research Fellowship , and the Kentucky Governor’s Scholarship, he has also been an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Structural Engineering Institute, CEAS Ambassadors, and CEAS Tribunal. After a stint as the VP of collegiate affairs for CEAS’ student government, Cortas was appointed by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine as  UC’s Undergraduate Student Trustee . 

Cortas aims to utilize his interest and knowledge of civil engineering to make a tangible impact on the lives of those in his community. 

Joseph Cortas poses with a hardhat in the High Bay Structural Lab at CEAS.

“How we choose to build our buildings inherently affects how we interact as a society and a community as a whole,” Cortas said. “In high school, I took a college course on life and construction, which looked at how the built environment around us shapes the way that we interact with each other. It inspired me to further involve myself with a lot of community work and advocacy to build relationships with not just my classmates, but also the larger community around me, to better understand how to best utilize the things we make for people. It’s always been fascinating for me to see the intersection of engineering and how it impacts lives.”

After touring more than 10 universities, Cortas ultimately wanted an academic experience that put the student’s development and support at the center of the experience, which he found at CEAS. 

"I wanted a faculty and support system that very obviously placed the student at the center of the experience,” Cortas said. “I wanted to feel the understanding that engineering can be difficult and competitive at times. In my experience, academic and personal support permeates through CEAS, whether it’s cooperative education or instruction.”

Joseph Cortas attends a student trustee conference in Columbus, Ohio. Pictured are Jordan Conner, Deputy Director of Boards and Commissions, Collin Claywell, Operations Manager of Boards and Commissions, Haley Dees, Student Trustee from Kent State University, Natalie Dando from Youngstown State University, Kevin Bishop from the University of Toledo, and Akshat Shah from Cleveland State University.

Cortas credits the wide variety of experiences he has had during his time at UC to the connections and learning he has gained. He joined CEAS Ambassadors partially because he had such a positive experience with one when he toured UC as a high school student. He also went on to make various administrative connections through his time with CEAS Tribunal , eventually culminating in his own leadership experiences in student government . And of course, through his co-op experience , Cortas was able to tangibly contribute to his personal and professional development. 

When the time came to co-op for Cortas, he found himself excited at the vast array of possibilities ahead of him. After a comprehensive national search, Cortas chose to work in Milwaukee for HGA, an architectural engineering firm based in Minneapolis.  During his multiple rotations with the firm, Cortas was able to embark on a variety of real-world assignments, such as developing and reviewing construction drawings, performing structural analysis, and performing construction administration activities. He even got to work on a 17-story, $1.5 billion building. 

"I was abable to access a variety of options throughout my search. I was in a unique position because I didn’t have to go to any particular kind of place. I told myself that I would rather find the right position instead of worrying about where it would send me geographically, and it worked out for me,” Cortas said. 

"I thought it was a big deal that there was an emphasis from both UC and the company to do multiple co-op rotations. While it’s true that some people go to several companies, there have been many cases where students grow far more over subsequent co-op rotations with the same organization,” he said. “I was the only co-op student in a structural engineering department of around 20 people. Through time, the ability to interact so personally with people who possess so much knowledge was invaluable. I would not be where I am now if I didn’t leave my comfort zone and gain this experience through co-op.”

Joseph Cortas photographs a test specimen during preparation for cyclic tensile testing in the High Bay Structural Lab at CEAS.

Cortas’ success with HGA and his broad range of experiences led him to his final two co-op rotations working on thesis research assignments under James Swanson and Gian Rassati , associate professors of civil engineering at UC. The work is funded by the American Institute of Steel Construction. Cortas embraces this research work, which he describes as very different from industry work, while simultaneously balancing classes as part of the ACCEND program. ACCEND students can complete four co-op rotations instead of five, with the extra academic semester in their fourth year spent beginning graduate course work. 

“The ACCEND program played a big part in influencing my decision to come to UC. I think that so many students can benefit from just taking one graduate course, but the program allows and teaches so much about balancing work and the sheer variety of paths engineers can take. "

Joseph Cortas, CEAS '25

"It's been huge to have the opportunity to work in these respective fields in addition to directly learning the material,” Cortas said. “The ACCEND program played a big part in influencing my decision to come to UC. I think that so many students can benefit from just taking one graduate course, but the program allows and teaches so much about balancing work and the sheer variety of paths engineers can take. When I think about all of the knowledge that I will have cultivated in just five years, it opens up a lot of doors. There’s an incredible amount of respect that I have for all of the faculty, academic advisers , and mentors that have helped me along the way.”

While Cortas is deeply appreciative that his masters work has allowed him to develop connections and garner experiences that he otherwise may not have, he continues searching for the perfect intersection to combine his engineering skills with the leadership ability he has acquired. 

"I've pursued various roles of leadership within the university. Whether it was being in CEAS Tribunal or a student ambassador, or being the vice president of collegiate affairs, I have always looked for ways to get involved and make a difference around me,” Cortas said. “With whatever work I pursue, I ask myself: how can the work that I do impact communities and support people where they are?”

Joseph Cortas in his capacity as Student Trustee at UC Commencement.

Reflecting back on his journey as a Bearcat, Cortas found his experiences with people to be the most impactful. He highlighted his time as a tutor with Bearcat Buddies, UC’s mentorship program for Cincinnati Public School students, and his assignment to visit Uruguay to talk about the importance of education as a part of a U.S. State Department student delegation. 

“I’ve always wanted to emphasize the importance of representation. There is a big weight to be carried when you’re an ambassador representing a community, in any sense. Realizing how much the ability to do good can actually change things is so powerful,” he said. “All of the roles that I’ve had were natural progressions in me wanting to better aid and advocate for the voices of my community. The aim to do good has been the guiding light throughout my journey, and I hope I can leave everyone that I work with in a better position for the future.”

Featured image at top: Joseph Cortas performing weld tests in the High Bay Structural Lab at CEAS. Photo/Provided

• Student Experience
• College of Engineering and Applied Science
• Experience-based Learning
• Civil and Architectural Engineering and Construction Management

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