In a passage early on, the narrator declares, "In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true." Not only does the book engage with the invisible scars of battle and the PTSD that results from combat, but it also alludes to the destructive psychology of nationalism and imperialism and the folly of concepts such as valor, honor, and truth. Instead, The Things We Carried begs the reader to question the very nature of life, death, and survival.
Profound, heartbreaking, thought-provoking war literature at its finest, this novel isn't content to simply explore the emotional lives of soldiers. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen." Show more It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. In searching for meaning and understanding through recollection and retelling, O'Brien concludes, "In the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. Tracing the emotional lives of several soldiers in his unit, O'Brien draws parallels between the memories and objects the men bring with them to the war, and what they wind up bringing back with them when they leave, if they're so lucky to return in one piece. The semi-autobiographical, nonlinear storytelling of award-winning author Tim O'Brien darts from anecdote to anecdote, leading readers through misty riverbanks along the Song Tra Bong, to napalm-charred villages, to fields of manure and piles of corpses, exposing the grim and graphic realities of war. THE THINGS THEY CARRIED follows an infantry unit wandering through the jungles of Vietnam in the late 1960s at the height of the American intervention. Considered a classic of literature about the Vietnam War and a meditation on war itself, The Things They Carried was written for adults, but many teens read it. Lots of swearing (including "bitch," "motherf-ker," and "c-ksucker") and racial slurs ("gook," "redskin"). One chapter tells the story of a man the storyteller killed with a hand grenade and the bloody aftermath. There are gruesome depictions of firefights, mortar sieges, unexpected explosions, and general death and destruction, including descriptions of disfigured corpses and details of the visceral feelings associated with killing and dying.
Focusing on the physical horror and emotional destructiveness of warfare, the book grapples with heavy questions about mortality, trauma, honor, cowardice, and the loss of humanity in desperate situations. Parents need to know that The Things They Carried is a gut-wrenching combination of novel, story collection, and memoir partly based on the real experiences of acclaimed author and war veteran Tim O'Brien during the Vietnam War.