The Things They Carried

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	• The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien Broadway, 1998 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 708 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Things They Carried

a memoir but also like a series of short stories which flow together seamlessly into almost a dreamlike tale. It is a great read even for those of us who have no real conscept of what war is really like. Many hidden jewels inside. Well worth the read.

Thank you Mr. O'Brien

I don't really know where to begin to describe this book. To call it a book is an understatement. This book is an experience. The stories evoke many different emotions.

I haven't read any other war novels or stories, so I don't have a frame of reference for comparison in that regard. What I can say however is that O'Brien has a way of making his stories tangible. He describes this better than I can when he tells what stories mean to him and what they do for him. His stories did for me what they do for him. You'll have to read the book to understand what I mean.

Throughout the stories, O'Brien throws in lessons in story-telling, including a very ironic passage in one story in which O'Brien interrupts one of his characters' stories in order to explain why you should never interrupt a story. I suspect he wore a sly grin the whole time he was writing that.

Overall, an incredibly beautiful, poignant, superbly written collection of stories.

The stories do involve a lot of graphic imagery, violence and some profanity, none of which ever feel gratuitous. If you are disturbed by that, then this book may not be for you, but I would strongly suggest to anyone else that this book is worth experiencing.

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Beautiful writing

This has been on my "to read" list for years. I'm so glad I finally got to it. It is very powerful and amazingly beautifully written. It is a sort of memoir of his time in Vietnam but it also incorporates storytelling from other's points of view. It's one of those books where you feel as if you've been kicked in the gut when you finish.

Truth in Fiction

There's little about this book that hasn't been said here, but I'll try.

I first heard about "The Things They Carried" while in college, and I just wasn't interested. War, schmar. I'd seen war movies, and there were plenty of books out there about soldiers and what they do.

Years later and a little older, I'd heard the book mentioned so many times that I had to get it. (How can you say you love English and writing and then, in the same breath, admit you've never read O'Brien's most famous work? Well, you can't.)

There's a lot I like about the book, but these four things in particular put it in with the small stack of books I simply won't part with:

1. His technique. First person all the way through, but unless he makes a point of reminding you that the narrator is talking, you forget. At least, I forgot.

2. The little things that are so huge they can make you cry. For example: the emotionless observation of the baby buffalo; Rat, who puts his soul in a letter to a girl who doesn't write back; the "simple" question of going this way or that way, and what it means to do either.

3. Sometimes, nothing is made more true than when a layer of fiction is applied. I believe you can feel more truth in fiction than you often can in non-fiction, because strict non-fiction has a way of keeping that personal distance between reader and writer. "This is MY story," non-fiction says. "You may have gone through something similar, but this is MINE." O'Brien's fiction invites someone like me, who has never (and likely will never) experience a soldier's war, to see (at least in some small part) war from the point of view of one fighting it. It's not an accounting of a string of events, but a trip into the psyche.

4. This: "Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth" (83).Homefront

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The Things They Carried

The novel "The Things They Carried" is based on Tim O'Brien's military service during the time of the Vietnam War. It is told using fictional characters whose story was inspired by O'Brien's own experience. Each person carried something different whether it was love notes, bibles, ammunition, guns or even tranquilizers. However, not only did they carry tangible items, they also carried the emotional burdens of the war.

O'Brien was born October 1, 1946 in Austin, Minnesota. He studied political science in college and protested against the war. Therefore it was very difficult to accept his draft notice which he got as a graduate student in 1968. He served in Vietnam from February 1969 until March 1970.

This novel made me realize the true horrors of war. For example the medic Rat Kiley became so terrified that he began to feel as if bugs were crawling all over him. He shot his toe off so he could go home. Death came in many gruesome ways - those I expected like land mines, and those that surprised me, drowning by sinking into mud.

The one positive feeling I got from the book is that friendship can be very strong and hold us together even in the most trying of times. I would recommend this book to anyone who wonders what war does to ordinary people.

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reviews: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, page 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

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