Savannah Chacon
Thomas Laird
English 101
4 November 2014

Tim O’Brien
Tim O'Brien was in college when the Vietnam War was happening which influenced his work. His most popular work is called “The Things They Carried” which is a book compiled of short stories about his experience in the Vietnam War. There are 6 of his short stories: The Things They Carried, Love, Spin, On The Rainy River, Enemies and Friends, How To Tell a True War Story which was published in 1990. His next popular work was “Going After Cacciato” which was written in 1978. The similarities in themes is that they are both surrounded by the idea of war. In “The Things They Carried,” there are psychological burdens from the war that follow these soldiers for the rest of their lives. O’Brien uses the title, “things they carried” to imply that the “things” the characters carry in these stories are both literal and figurative. While they all carry heavy physical loads, they also all carry heavy emotional loads, full of grief, fear, and love. In the novel “Going After Cacciato,” the theme is seen as having courage and taking control. Both of these themes from these two different books relate because the theme of control is a theme that subsumes and defines courage itself; therefore, courage in war requires self-control of body, senses, and emotions. Soldiers must have a lot of self-control in order to be in war because they must follow orders without questioning.
In “The Things They Carried,” The main character is himself. Tim O’Brien is the narrator and the protagonist through the entire set of stories. He enters the war with fear of what shame it will bring him if he dodged the war; he leaves the war as a middle-aged man who tells stories about the Vietnam War in order to cope with hardcore memories. He speaks about inexplicable horrors he witnessed as a soldier. Because O’Brien experienced the