The things they carried by tim o'brien - Essay Example

The Things They Carried: A Critical Review ‘The Things They Carried’ is an amazing set of short stories complied by Tim O’Brien on the basis of the life of a squad of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. This book is an artistically enthusiastic one with the ascription of a series of interrelated characters and their specific roles in the platoon life. The most significant of all the beautiful features of this work is doubtlessly the wonderful logic and the active participation of reality O’Brien provides for each incident that is described in different stories.

The reading is surely a magnificent experience for the readers because of the content and the interactive langue used in the text. Moreover, it is important to notice that the original feeling of the army life is evoked by the author with his acute care for including the highest possible amount of conversation comprising the real and phrases used by American soldiers.From my point of view as a reader, O’Brien makes the reading more sensible than the normal combat-based books with the courtesy he renders to the title.

‘The things they carried’ cannot be compared to any general work meant for the reader’s expectation about satisfaction to be at an average level. It is so, because of the beauty encompassed in the literature by the collective accreditation of all human feelings and emotions with respect to changing conditions of life. After having spent a long eight-year term for the American army as part of the fighting legion deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, I can say I have started to see things differently.

I find a lot of moments in the life of the author matching with mine. Especially when I compare the entry of my baby girl into my life and the short-term separations due to calls of duty, I feel boundlessly emotional. The book’s splendid narration of emotionally rich moments in each chapter drives me along a new reach of comfortable sensation. Surely the book gives a participatory effect with the magnetism of the author’s penmanship.Although the book is a set of twenty two beautifully organized short stories each carrying a specific emotional and perspective element to describe, the two aspects which draw my attention are passiveness and death.

The main theme of the entire platoon’s story of seems to rely on these two major points. The feelings of platoon officer Lieutenant Jimmy Cross with regards to his lady love is an example of the unusual possessiveness wrapped in the military outfit. I can compare the officer’s emotional conflicts with most of those I experienced with a Captain in our company. He used to be equally annoyed for some undisclosed reasons too. “He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there” (OBrien 1); this line is enough to sense the passion of Cross.

In the same manner, each member of the team carries one or the other things of his favorite personal possession – both tangible and intangible. O’Brien further says, “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die” (20), in a very sensible and impressive way. Another resemblance I find with my army life in the book is in the areas of narrating the horror of death. The battle fields of Iraq where innocent civilians are shot down frighten me with nightmares. As such, the story draws great amount of appreciation for the author’s observation of the aspect of death in the perspective of a soldier.

Beyond words can explain, the story draws great amount of appreciation for the author’s observation of the aspect of death in the perspective of a soldier. O’Brien considers the fact that proximity to death in a war brings equal proximity to life too (77). Again, I can give full credit to the author for the brilliant peace of sensually touching description composed by him for telling us about the role of Kiowa from the moment of his entry to death. The story deals with the aspect of death with a spiritual consideration rather than the professional combating enthusiasm it can bring in a mortal war.

Like O’Brien, after a term of service to the American military, my mind induces me to tell the world about the way my life has been transformed by the impacts of my exposures to duty-bound cruelty and helplessness. It is truly tough to handle the life outside the military.Finally, it may be suggested that ‘The Things They Carried’ is a complete collection of the unseen stories of unnoticed emotional and aesthetic aspects of human life. With this book, O’Brien successfully achieved the aim of taking the readers to the realities of military life with a time for true introspection for each reader as a free citizen.

Works CitedOBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. US: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.