Historical_Perspective_on_the_Things_They_Carried

Historical Perspective on The Things They Carried The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a collection of interrelated short story’s that, although billed as fiction, cannot really be viewed as a traditional novel. O’Brien often blurs fiction and nonfiction, into a writing style that he refers to as “metafiction” leaving the reader wondering if the stories told are the truth, or just stories. O’Brien was born and raised in a small town in Minnesota, and attended college at McCalester College. In 1968 he was drafted, and despite the fact that he was against the war, he reported for duty and was shipped out to Vietnam arriving shortly after the Mai Lai Massacre. Published in 1990, The Things They Carried, which was preceded by a story of the same name, follows O’Brien’s recollection of a series of common events that occurred while serving in the infantry during the Vietnam Conflict. While there is only one story directly related to the first, Love, all of the stories follow the same set of characters, especially Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Ironically, or perhaps on purpose, the book’s title page terms it “A work of fiction by Tim O’Brien,” but the main character and narrator is Tim O’Brien who is a Vietnam veteran and writer, and this lends to the speculation of whether these stories are indeed just that, or if they are biographical in nature. Regardless, Tim O’Brien paints a vivid picture of War and the things that men carry with them, both tangible and intangible, long after the they have gone home. Friend 2 The first story, “The Things They Carried” focuses on the men of Alpha company, and the young lieutenant who must provide them leadership in completing a mission that seemingly has no purpose, no meaning and no foreseeable end in sight. It describes at length, and in vivid detail the things a soldier must carry, both tangible and intangible, and is a metaphor for the burden of war they carry both for themselves and the nation. The things they carry vary from items necessary for survival in war, to good luck charms and things that remind them of home. The “story” is told in told entirely in the third person, and one gets the sense that it is a true retelling of an event that actually occurred during Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict was the longest and most unpopular war in of the twentieth century. After roughly eleven years of protracted U.S. involvement in Vietnam, nearly 60,000 American deaths, and over 2 million Vietnamese deaths, the U.S. was forced to chalk it up as a failure. From 1968 to 1970, the United States was in turmoil. Not only did the Country have to carry the burden of the war in Vietnam, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are assassinated, and antiwar protesting peaks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The Vietnam war was the first to reported directly via television, so, for the first time, Americans watched from their living rooms as it unfolded as reported.. The war caused turmoil on the American home front and polarized the nation. Despite the lack of cohesion and support at home, the soldiers of Alpha Company fight on a united front, bound by the things they carried, both seen and unseen. The men of Alpha Company must bear the weight, not only of the gear they must carry, but of the consequences of their experiences, “including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.” (O’Brien, 7) Friend 3 Vietnam had a profound impact on the way America goes to War. The draft lottery was signed into law in 1969 and basically assigned a number to all men born between 14 September 1944 and 31 December 1950. Numbers were drawn beginning for every day between those dates, and numbers were assigned from 10-109. The number determined the time of induction which would begin January 1970. O’Brien was drafted, yet, despite his open opposition to the war, he reports as ordered and goes to Vietnam. On the home front, the most successful antiwar protest in the twentieth century erupts. It spans a wide cross cultural and ethnic cut of American Society, and includes college students on campuses around the Country. Yet, O’Brien focusses not on the protestors at colleges, but instead tells a story of an imagined love between Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and a college coed named Martha, who writes to him about her classes and, as a matter of course, always signs her letters “Love, Martha”. (O’Brien, 2) In summary, many parallels between the war in Vietnam and the changes in the American fabric during the Vietnam conflict can be seen in the pages of O’Brien’s book, however, the first story concerns the weight of the things carried by soldiers and how much they weigh and the metaphorical representation of things that soldiers carry inside them, that weigh them down, until they can bear them no more. Works Cited DeBenedetti, Charles. An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990 Kaplan, Steven. Understanding Tim O'Brien. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Penguin, 1990. Wesley, Marilyn. “Truth and Fiction in Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried.” College Literature 29.2 (2002): 1–18. "Overview: “The Things They Carried”." Gale Online Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Aug. 2010 Making Things Present: Tim O’Brien’s Autobiographical Metafiction, Robin Silbergleid Contemporary Literature, Volume 50, Number 1, Spring 2009, pp. 129-155 (Article) Published by University of Wisconsin Press "The Things They Carried." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano. Vol. 74. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Aug. 2010.