Blog 3

Tim O'Brien illustrates the physical and emotional experiences from the Vietnam war in his novel "The Things they carried" through a series of short stories that tells a detailed story through the eyes of the soilders showing the burdens and struggles they had to go through. These burdens takes an emotional and physical toll on them creating regrets, deaths and fear everyday of their lives including post war. These soilders were bined together creating relationships that would be the key for one anothers survival and making them a hero figure to the ones that view them that way. These men have been alienated from there normal lives so they carry there individual items that have an emotional, physical, or spirtual importance to them hoping these things can help them make it through the next day. Tim O'brien does a great job combining his personal stories and fictional ideas to bring these stories to life.

In the first chapter Tim O'Brien goes into detail about Lieutenant Jimmy Cross's and how he falls for his hometown crush Martha. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries a picture of her so it brings him hope and fills his emotional satisfications. He's constantly thinking about her, but is she an asset or liability to the task he has at hand. He blames his emotions on the death of his soilder Ted Lavender who was shot in battle and since he's the leader of his men, he feels guilty. The other men carried their personal items that they felt would help them deal with the horrors of the war. "Ted Lavender, who was scared carried tranquilizers...) (2). Henry Dobbins who was a big man carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned in heavy syrup over pound cake" (2). Kiowa was a devouted baptist so he carried a copy of the new testament and having a faith in a religeon is known to be a great way of hoping for a better way or victory over a situation as long as you had the faith to belive for it. Everyday these soilders have to wake up considering that not only is tomorrow not promised but the next hours from their very moment could be taken away from them so believing in yourself and taking anything in that may help you survive may be more important that the gun you posses but couls as well be the connection to the death of someone else or the death of your own.

This book is fiction but Tim O'Brien gives us these stories to hold on to but since we weren't there to experience it how can we believe that they are true. It is true that their was a Vietnam War, and many people died. It is true that the soilders who fought and survived the war came out mentally bruised and fractured from what they went through. All of this is true but the stories that Tim O'brien tell us, is it the truth? O'Brien say's "in war you lose your sense of the definate, hense your sense of truth itself, and therefore it is safe to say that in a true war story nothing is absolutely true" (78). O'Brien explains that in a war story, you take out of it from what you hear. You make true from the morals and lessons you got from it and make it into your own in your own life. There is truth behind these stories, but some things are left to be unspoken. Some things are meant to be forgotten so we must tell the stories of the soilders that faught in this war how they might have wanted it to look like. We must keep their heroics alive.

A true hero is someone who fights for what he believes in. He may even die for the cause but this may not be the exact defination that Tim O'Brien would go with. He believes that a true hero is someone who goes against entering the war. "I was a coward, I went to war"(58). He is clearly saying that fighting for your coutry is not something that should be considered Heroic. He encourages men to run away from the war and that killing a man was nothing to be glorified over but it was something that they were afraid if they havent. The men were afraid of being considered a coward.

Tim O'Brien ends the book with the chapter of his childhood sweetheart because she was innocent. He compares her death to the death of the other men who died in the war starting with Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon and Kiowa. These men died in war and considering the circumstances there was a good possibility that death would have come there way. Linda who was the girl who died, died for no reason unlike the men in war who killed other people. They knew what they were getting themselves into unlike Linda's death which was unlikely.