Pablo C. Avila
ENG101.2651
Dr. J. Elizabeth Clark
18 October 2007

First essay on The Things They Carried

The Vietnam War was the longest military conflict in the U.S. history, from 1959 to 1975[1]. Many soldiers who fought there have written books about their experiences, however, Tim O’Brien, an American writer and soldier at Vietnam, has written the best story telling about what the war was; The Things They Carried. In this, his last novel, he recalls and tells all his experiences in detail about the war; as well as stories about his friends, and makes a reflection about them. He shows his feelings through stories that are difficult to clearly identify as “true.” This book shows us situations of hurt, friendship, and even love that soldiers experienced in war and how they have affected them even nowadays.

One major point about Tim O'Brien’s work is how many situations hurt the soldiers’ lives. From the beginning, O'Brien starts his work by numbering the many things soldiers have to carry; C rations, knives, some photographs, and even some relatives’ distrust are some of the things they have to take every day in war. Little by little, O'Brien demonstrates how hurt invaded each soldier, how difficult it was to get used to a difficult and different environment, as he says; “Jimmy Cross did not want the responsibility of leading these men. He had never wanted it.” (167). In this extract, O'Brien shows how complicated it was for Lieutenant Jimmy to have this responsibility in the war, he probably would have liked to do something completely different. At the same time, O'Brien struggled when making the decision about whether or not going to war; it was something he couldn’t face at first. Moreover, the soldiers sometimes got desperate about the nonsense of war; many of them were there just because they had been drafted. For instance, some of these situations