Tim O'Brien's the Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is not a novel about the Vietnam War.
It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought
about from the war. O'Brien makes several statements about war through these dynamic
characters. He shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressures of war, he
makes an effective antiwar statement, and he comments on the reversal of a social deviation
into the norm. By skillfully employing the stylistic technique of specific, conscious
detail selection and utilizing connotative diction, O'Brien thoroughly and convincingly makes
each point.
The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is
one of O'Brien's predominant themes in his novel. By consciously selecting very descriptive
details that reveal the drastic change in manner within the men, O'Brien creates
within the reader an understanding of the effects of war on its participants. One of the
soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a Thumb. . .The Thumb was
dark brown, rubbery to touch. . . It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen
or sixteen"(13). Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, yet war
makes him into a very hard-mannered, emotionally devoid soldier, carrying about a severed
finger as a trophy, proud of his kill. The transformation shown through Bowler is an
excellent indicator of the psychological and emotional change that most of the soldiers undergo.
To bring an innocent young man from sensitive to apathetic, from caring to hateful,
requires a great force; the war provides this force. However, frequently are the changes more
drastic. A soldier named "Ted Lavender adopted an orphaned puppy. . .Azar strapped it
to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device"(39). Azar has become
demented; to kill a puppy that someone else has adopted is horrible. However, the
infliction of violence
It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought
about from the war. O'Brien makes several statements about war through these dynamic
characters. He shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressures of war, he
makes an effective antiwar statement, and he comments on the reversal of a social deviation
into the norm. By skillfully employing the stylistic technique of specific, conscious
detail selection and utilizing connotative diction, O'Brien thoroughly and convincingly makes
each point.
The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is
one of O'Brien's predominant themes in his novel. By consciously selecting very descriptive
details that reveal the drastic change in manner within the men, O'Brien creates
within the reader an understanding of the effects of war on its participants. One of the
soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a Thumb. . .The Thumb was
dark brown, rubbery to touch. . . It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen
or sixteen"(13). Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, yet war
makes him into a very hard-mannered, emotionally devoid soldier, carrying about a severed
finger as a trophy, proud of his kill. The transformation shown through Bowler is an
excellent indicator of the psychological and emotional change that most of the soldiers undergo.
To bring an innocent young man from sensitive to apathetic, from caring to hateful,
requires a great force; the war provides this force. However, frequently are the changes more
drastic. A soldier named "Ted Lavender adopted an orphaned puppy. . .Azar strapped it
to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device"(39). Azar has become
demented; to kill a puppy that someone else has adopted is horrible. However, the
infliction of violence