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The Things They Carried
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The Things They Carried
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The Things They Carried
Ebook244 pages4 hours

The Things They Carried

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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About this ebook

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. 
 
The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.
 
Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing.

The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherMariner Books
Release dateSep 1, 2003
ISBN9780547420295
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The Things They Carried
Author

Tim O'Brien

TIM O’BRIEN received the National Book Award for Going After Cacciato. Among his other books are The Things They Carried, Pulitzer Finalist and a New York Times Book of the Century, and In the Lake of the Woods, winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. He was awarded the Pritzker Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing.

Read more from Tim O'brien

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Reviews for The Things They Carried

Rating: 4.47588424437299 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A somewhat confusing mix of short stories or vignettes that have common characters and setting but give different perspectives on people and their actions and their reactions to the war. This short period in their lives casts a very long shadow – and the exaggerated effects it has on behavior are complex. Some of the things that happen (or don’t—the author states that he has changed some things for effect) are truly horrifying and the book gives you insights into the changes it would make, forever, in anyone who lived through something like this.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I picked up this book after having been blown away by the short story (AKA Chapter 1), however the rest of the book, while good, fell far from living up to the first chapter.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I read this as a jaded teenager and it managed to penetrate my armor. Not the details, but the experience of reading it and talking about it. Maybe the first time I had my eyes opened to the different kinds of truth that fiction can tell.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Beautiful writing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The Things They Carried is an excellent companion to Ken Burns's documentary, The Vietnam War, in which Tim O'Brien is one of the many contributors. It is categorized as a work of fiction...a series of stories about being a foot soldier in Vietnam, which O'Brien was. I think the line between fact and fiction is very very blurry here, but I have no doubt that all of it is True. O'Brien plays around with the concept of truth in fiction within the text; he tells the same story from different perspectives, often repeating certain "facts" like a mantra, or as if the narrator is attempting to settle the "truth" of the matter in his own mind in a way he can live with. He presents certain chapters as direct address to the reader (here's why I told that story that way), but are those "real" or factual, or just also True? There is no shying away from the grim, unimaginable horrors of that particular war; the things clean-cut American kids (many of them teenagers, can we please never never never forget that?) did there that defy their upbringing are spelled out in graphic prose. The things that they suffered and endured and died from, the lies they were told and the other lies they told themselves or their loved ones, the physical torment they learned to live with, and the mental anguish that eventually did some of them in are all in there. And yet the overall effect of The Things They Carried isn't depressing or horrifying at all. It's a brilliant piece of writing, with flashes of pure poetry, and an interesting structure. The sum is quite inexplicably beautiful. Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This goes in the life changing pile.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Read this collection of stories again after many years. Better than I remembered. Superbly written and profoundly moving.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An evocative, visceral, meditative look at being part of the Vietnam war and the aftermath it leaves in one's life.It reads like non-fiction, but the author's conversations with you tell you that it is a somewhat fictionalised account. And I like his discussion and meditation on his craft, it adds immeasurably to the book.The structure of the book is non-linear and works wonderfully, with interlinkages throughout and a thread of linearity to keep you grounded.Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Just read it. Powerful, moving, wise and insightful. Nothing I can say here will do this book justice. Just read it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I had this at 3.5 stars for a minute, fearing a higher rating would betray a MN prejudice. That because O'Brien's completed his anti-war argument my the time the platoon arrives in the Song Tra Bong. He doesn't struggle with the difficult task of explaining a true war story. And that war stories need neither an ending nor make a point to be true. For me, a careful re-read, collecting annotations will guide my story-telling efforts, the chapter "How To Tell a True War Story" as the guide. The chapters are short stories in themselves, but his characters live through them, even after they are factually "dead".
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I was born too late to have a personal recollection of the Vietnam Era other than remembering seeing sporadic footage of the war while my dad watched the news. Basically my memory only pulls up images of Walter Cronkite so seriously reporting the death tolls, etc. I am so impressed by this book and even more so by the man behind it. There are various interviews of Mr. O'Brien online and a talk he gave at the Arlington Public Library about this book in particular that is worth watching. He explains why he uses fictional accounts rather than just telling us exactly what his personal experiences were. It is for the purpose of the story and finding a better way to help us see, hear, feel what he felt. He said if he told us that he lay on his bed at night tossing and turning about whether he should run away to Canada or go fight a war he didn't believe in, it wouldn't get his true angst across to us. But the fact he used a fictional account of staying with Mr. Berdahl(?) and what transpired as he looked across the water to Canada and the emotions he struggled with, we could get a better sense of the despair he felt when he made his decision in real life. Same principle for his accounts of the war.On his Facebook page, he recommends a website called BookDrum.com (which I'm so thrilled to find) that will be helpful to anyone reading this book as it gives descriptions of weapons, maps, terminology, cultural references, etc. mentioned in the book and helps clarify details which I, as a civilian who isn't familiar with all things military, appreciate. This book eloquently describes the emotions of fear (terror), anger, confusion, disillusionment, disgust, shame, grief, guilt, etc. that anyone fighting any kind of war must feel. It is so hard to understand how young men and women can face these things and not come back changed. It is also so strange to think that a platoon of soldiers were relying on someone only a few years older than them (Mr. O'Brien's LT was only 24) to guide them. How our soldiers stand up to the pressure is amazing to me. It doesn't matter what our personal beliefs are regarding war or the reasons for war, but the members of the military deserve our utmost respect for facing their fears and doing what is asked of them, whether right or wrong in their eyes or our own.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A series of stories held together by common characcters and place - a squad of soldiers the Viet Nam War. A good read worth visiting again someday. 4.5 stars
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    ”The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.” (Page 230)Tim O’Brien is quite a storyteller. Here’s what I felt while I was reading: it was twilight on a hot summer evening. The crickets were chirping as I sat on the porch swing, gently moving it back and forth, while I listened to these stories of this author’s time in Viet Nam. He had me mesmerized from the first page. But wait a minute, what the heck was I reading? When I looked at the LT tags, before I read the book, I saw---memoir, short stories, fiction, historical fiction---memoir and fiction? How is that possible? Further investigation, after I finished the book, revealed that the work is something called metafiction, a term I was unfamiliar with. According to what I gleaned, although the author and the main character in the stories share the same name, age, and experience in Viet Nam, the book is a work of fiction, something the author reiterated many times throughout the narrative. Another thing that helps to define metafiction is the author telling about the writing of the book which happens in the story entitled How to Tell a True War Story.” So apparently this is not memoir but fiction. Why he didn’t make it clear by giving the character a name other than his own is puzzling.The stories are heartbreaking and reveal the depth of despair that one of the worst times in our country’s history brought about. It should be required reading for all those who serve as president or congressional member, those people who make the decisions to send boys to war; those who choose to put lives on the line while they rest comfortably at home. The stories also reveal the camaraderie apparent in the relationships between these brave soldiers. If we can’t learn from these experiences we’re bound to make the same mistakes, over and over.The characters are all well-drawn and show great depth and the almost two dozen interrelated and interwoven stories that comprise this book, are incredibly well done. Some will tear your heart out. Some will make you smile. Some will fill you with amazement and wonder. And anger. The first (and title) story The Things They Carriedhad enormous impact and set the stage for what was to come and introduced, intimately, the characters: ”The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes. Military Payment Certificates, C rations…Most of them were common grunts and carried the standard M-16 gas-operated assault rifle which weighed 23 pounds unloaded, but which was always loaded.” (Page 4)As you turn the pages and get to know the members of Alpha Company, you realize you are in the hands of a master storyteller and for him it’s all about the story:”Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” (Page 38) And as a reader, what more could you want? Very highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I cannot believe that I never read this book until now even though I've been told for years how good it is. I read it because one of my teaching colleagues in our book group is teaching it this spring and asked us to read it. I came away at the end thinking that it might be the best book written in the second half of the 20c. It is as others will say searingly honest, poetic, even humorous at moments. The burden of war is so real and the need not to send young men (and women) off to war so ever-present-- both style and structure support the theme,
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Although Mr. O'Brien claims this to be a book of fiction, much of it is factual. Whether it happened to these particular characters or not, he describes the Vietnam experience by making you feel as if you were there.The things they carried weren't just in their ruck sacks. They were in their hearts, minds, emotions and souls. The physical things they carried gave you a more in-depth look at each characters personality.Mr. O'Brien writes in a way that mixes humor with gore and the psychological way each man had to deal with his tour. It is an extremely fascinating book and I highly recommend it to anyone who want's to learn these experience our brave veterans faced and what war can do to a soldier.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book reads like non-fiction. Tim O'Brien served in combat in the Vietnam War. He saw many of the horrors that he describes in this book. But his goal is not to tell us what he calls the "happening-truth," to provide an accounting of the actual events. Instead, he is direct about his purpose, saying, "I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. . . What stories can do, I guess, is make things present" (pp. 170-1). O'Brien succeeds in achieving this purpose. He does not tell a linear story, but in a series of vignettes, he takes us to the front lines of the Vietnam war. He takes us inside the heads and the hearts of the young men who served there. He tells us about the things they discussed, the ways they spent their time, the friendships they formed, and the things they carried. He puts a face on the war. The stories he tells are intimate. It seems that he is telling these stories for himself - to remember, to understand - and we are lucky enough to read over his shoulder.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I found The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien to be at times an uncomfortable read, and at others an inspiring read. At all times however, this is a superbly written story of what it really felt like to be a young combat soldier in Viet Nam. Not a straight forward story as it has very little to do with plot, but rather the random reminiscing of a young man sent to a strange, foreign country to fight in an unpopular war. At times I forget that most wars are fought by the young. The boys in this book were, in many cases, not even in their twenties, and their immediate leaders were only a year or two older. As an older woman, looking back on this, and thinking of all the other boys that are serving their countries even today, I feel such compassion for both them and their families. Tim O’Brien, like so many others, has been haunted by his experiences in Viet Nam, and I hope by penning this fine memoir, he has been able to lay some of these ghosts to rest. I would recommend that anyone who wants to get a real feel for what Viet Nam was like for American soldiers that they read both The Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The first book I ever read from Tim O'Brien. A great first person account of the Vietnam War. Very raw and true.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This novel is a tale of Tim O'Brien's true encounters during the Vietnam War. It explains how men carry certain extra items to their already heavy load to keep them sane and in touch with reality. It is a tough time and the platoon is constantly losing men. This novel takes the reader into the gruesome true stories of Tim and his platoon. O'Brien uses real names for all his characters which I believe is a respectful aspect. I would recommend this book for a social studies lesson or for a pleasure read. The reader can not help but become attached to each character as the story bring personality and life to all the stories.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Beautiful and haunting stories about the nature and the burdens of those who have to go to war.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I've read several of O'Brien's novels, but this collection of related short stories about the Vietnam War is his most powerful work. Indeed, it is one of the most powerful books I have read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    O'Brien writes about war in a horribly realistic war. His stuff is fascinating, though often brutal and tough to read. He mixes reality and fiction like no other author I have read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a must read for anyone who is pro-war. A set of short stories, but the characters in each of the stories is the same group of people in O'Brian's Alpha company during the Vietnam War. Powerful stories.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of my favorite books. Definitely multiple re-reads in order. Powerful, yet subtle writing that opens the reader up to the private spheres of servicemen/veterans.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A very moving account of Vietnam viewed through the lens of later on. At first I thought this was all a bit cliched and haven't I seen the film of this before but then the fragmentary construction, the repetitions, the endless going over the same ground got to me and I was hooked/haunted. Also a meditation on fiction, why we tell stories and how.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Accolades for this book preceded my reading but now I "get it." A collection of 'stories' about the author, Tim O'Brien's experiences in Vietnam. Many of these stories were first published elsewhere and they shine as pure gems. Whether or not the stories are true or embellished, they are all made better in the telling. He relates is attempts to run to Canada to avoid the draft and the strange peaceful interlude he encountered there. He tells of his colleagues dying (one, literally, in a shit field) and of people disappearing (Mary Anne Bell who arrives in 'culottes' and devolves into a completely different kind of creature) of gallows humor ("Lemon Tree" the song will never be the same for me) and of unspeakable sorrow. He has his own close brush with death and describes the shock and pain and descent into near oblivion. Bad language, violence, senseless violence, drug use, death and destruction: it's all here; despite this, this is highly recommended reading for anyone trying to understand the Vietnam War. In contrast, The Ghost Soldier pales to a bed-time story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Memorable stories. Vivid language. Brilliant structure. I imagine this is one of those war books that people who passionately hate war books can tolerate, if not enjoy.

    O'Brien's straddling the line of fiction and non-fiction is done skillfully and makes this book what it is. This is all true, he tells the reader, but it's not. Except that it is. Commentary on "what is truth" aside, I have a feeling many of O'Brien's Vietnam stories are more true than he leads on.

    Despite having enjoyed The Things They Carried I doubt I will return to Tim O'Brien anytime soon. His other novels largely deal with the same subject and it's been so masterfully done in this one that the others would pale in comparison.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I know this is labeled fiction but there is a realism here that told me the author had been there and gone through these things. There is a starkness in the prose that cuts to the truth and does not embellish it. Very powerfully written. It left its mark upon me. This is not a book that I will be able to work away from and forget.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was beautifully written. It transports you to the deep Vietnam jungles and the small, mid-western towns of a bygone era, blocking out the modern world. The stories about the war and its affect on those who fought in it were powerful and emotionally compelling. However, the author's rumination on the meaning of truth and storytelling, while interesting, was too overt and sometimes pulled me out of the narrative. If O'Brien had made his commentary more subtle, this book would have been absolutely perfect.

    A-
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    No matter how many books I read about the experience of war I know nothing of it. What I learn, most of all, is how far I am from even the slightest understanding what it does to our young people. And for what?