Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: An Analysis

Words: 1116
Pages: 5

Tim O'Brien in “The Things They Carried” is a veteran from the Vietnam war that reveals how and what things were like over there with his friends Kiowa, Lt. Jimmy Cross, and Norman Bowker. The War started in 1955 and ended roughly 20 years later. Tim tells how he survived that traumatizing experience and reveals what gruesome things they faced out in another world where it rains water and mortars. He then talks about love and how to always cherish what you have because your life isn’t guaranteed another second. O’Brien faces a substantial amount of pain by bullets, but the author discovers how he came to the conclusion that love will always be stronger than lead.
Tim O’Brien was just a teenager about to go into the draft, he had doubts about going into the Vietnam War because of all the crazy stories he’d hear and how he just wasn’t ready for it. He didn’t want to leave his hometown and go out
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His love life. He’s married and has a daughter, but even though the family is all there he isn’t satisfied with just that. Back when he was a kid, just nine years old he met a girl named Linda that he fell in love with at school. She’d always wear a cap to school because she was embarrassed of herself. Tim knew she was bald after someone had pulled off her cap. He didn’t mind. He liked her for who she was even though she was sick. It was till a classmate of his told him that she “kicked the bucket.” (224) He later went to her funeral with his dad. He stared at her body and couldn’t make up what he felt at the time. He was just a little kid who was trying to comprehend what just happened. For the past couple nights he dreamt of her dancing with him and spending time with her. He just couldn’t stop thinking about her. According to Cliff Notes, the author recognizes his “Ability to animate her in his mind and his writing about Vietnam, and realizes that he tells these stories to save his own