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One of the first questions people ask about The Things They Carried is this: Is it a novel, or a collection of short stories? The title page refers to the book simply as "a work of fiction," defying the conscientious reader's need to categorize this masterpiece. It is both: a collection of interrelated short pieces, which ultimately reads with the dramatic force and tension of a novel. Yet each one of the twenty-two short pieces is written with such care, emotional content, and prosaic precision that it could stand on its own.
The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O'Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the girl who grieves while she dances), and love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have. We hear the voices of the men and build images upon their dialogue. The way they tell stories about others, we hear them telling stories about themselves.
With the creative verve of the greatest fiction and the intimacy of a searing autobiography, The Things They Carried is a testament to the men who risked their lives in America's most controversial war. It is also a mirror held up to the frailty of humanity. Ultimately The Things They Carried and its myriad protagonists call to order the courage, determination, and luck we all need to survive.
O'Brien Cuts To the Core Of Our Fragile Lives
| Customer Rating:  | In The Things They Carried, Vietnam veteran Tim O'Brien called upon his own wartime experiences, labeled them as fiction, and wrote one of the most emotionally potent books I've ever read.
It's irrelevant to me how much of O'Brien's book "really happened" because O'Brien's words and stories in The Things They Carried deeply touched me. O'Brien wrote simply, but effectively. He tapped into real emotion and conveyed those emotions skillfully. With each and every short that made up a larger story with The Things They Carried, I could picture myself clear as day in those very same situations.
That's one benefit of calling this book fiction. Had O'Brien designated it nonfiction, I think each tale would have filtered through my knowledge this happened to O'Brien and registered as a "past event." But with it being called fiction, I could lose myself in the story and meld with it, become one with it, and see myself in it. It allowed me ownership that nonfiction does not.
While O'Brien offers authentic knowledge on weaponry, tactics, and all things associated with being a wartime soldier, he focuses more deeply upon the human element. The Things They Carried perfectly captures what it is to be human in times of chaos, fear, and horror. He doesn't glorify or lionize the characters in his stories. He treats them as "real" (and perhaps they were), and he offers only the emotional truth.
There are things in this book that chilled me to the bone. Not because it's overtly gory, but because O'Brien cuts to the core of our fragile lives. For instance, in one story a man dies after being sucked under mud during a mortar attack. But he doesn't write it from the dead man's perspective, he writes it first from the perspective of the man next to him, then from the perspective of the man pulling the body out of the mud the next day. Can you imagine? I assure you, you'll be able to imagine such a thing after reading The Things They Carried. And that's what makes this book so utterly effective. O'Brien forces you to put yourself in it, to experience it through his straightforward, transparent, and evocative words.
I honestly only read this book because Tim O'Brien was coming to a local university and I was invited to attend a private reception for him. I'd never heard of the man and had to ask a few friends for suggestions before one knew O'Brien's work and told me to read The Things They Carried. So expertly rendered were O'Brien's words and so powerful was the raw emotional honesty in his book that O'Brien has secured me as a life-long reader.
I strongly recommend you read The Things They Carried.
~Scott William Foley, author of Souls Triumphant |
Perfection
| Customer Rating: | Tim O'Brien is one of the greatest writers alive today. I think that his prestige and legacy will only grow as the genius of his works find a wider audience.
The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato make up the twin pillars of Vietnam literature. If you haven't read Going After Cacciato, please check it out.
The Things They Carried is as much a mediation on the nature of truth as it is a war story. The major themes of the novel are the ways stories shift meaning with continuous retelling, and the ways in which our own lives are at the mercy of memory. A haunting, moving masterpiece. |
"Some dumb thing happens a long time ago and you can't ever forget it..."
| Customer Rating: | ... is a quote from O'Brien's daughter, Kathleen, in the story "Field Trip." Kathleen had just turned 10, and O'Brien had taken her back to Vietnam, to show her where her dad had been. He was trying to convey what it was like to have been a soldier in that war. As the story is written, clearly he had not been very successful. Going back to the sadness and failure of Vietnam is so totally different from strolling along the high cliffs of Normandy, where purpose and success reigned.
"The Things They Carried" is widely recognized as the classic soldier's account of the Vietnam War. It now has 702 reviews on Amazon. What more can be said? Hopefully a number of things, including a few personal parallels. When the Second World War commenced, Norman Mailer, the author of that war's classic account, "The Naked and the Dead," asked himself one thing: From which theater of the war could he write a better book? He consciously chose the Pacific. You never get that sense of ambition from O'Brien's stories; rather you feel that he was haplessly swept along with the events, and his eclectic montage of images reflect the experiences he is still trying to understand.
O'Brien was a "grunt" in the ill-starred Americal Division, in Quang Ngai province, mostly in 1969. I was in the next province south, in Binh Dinh, at the end of 1968, as a medic in a tank unit. Like O'Brien I would stare at the hills to the west of the coastal plain, and dream of waking up one morning, and walking through them, away from the war, a fantasy that he turned into another moving book, "Going After Cacciato." O'Brien was certainly right in taking his daughter back to the `Nam, in the hopes of transmitting to the next generation our experiences. I did the same thing; my first of three trips back was in 1994. This is probably the same year O'Brien took Kathleen, since I saw his signature in the ledger at the memorial at My Lai. "Ill-starred" became the most common adjective for the Americal, due in part to the massacre of what was official determined as 504 civilians in this hamlet. This event was only revealed to the wider American public thanks to the courageous actions of a couple soldiers, Ron Ridenhour who wrote numerous American leaders, and Ronald Haeberle, whose photographs were published in Life magazine. Others in the military hierarchy, including Colin Powell, tried to cover up the massacre.
A few of O'Brien's stories did not resonate. I remain puzzled as to the significance of "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" which truly had to be a stoned-out fantasy. But most of the stories overwhelmingly hit resonance, including the suicide of Norman Bowker in "Notes," the hauntingly tragic portrait of a young Vietnamese school teacher in "The Man I Killed," and the philosophical underpinnings of "How to Tell a True War Story." O'Brien shifts in his story-telling, so that it is hard to tell what really happened, and what was imagined, and if there was a difference. Oh memory, speak truly.
It was only on my third trip back to Vietnam, in 1996, that I thought it was "safe" enough to take my wife and two children. At the time, my daughter was 12, my son 11, and I experienced some of the similar problems that O'Brien had in trying to convey what had happened in this now peaceful country. I insisted on climbing the hills surrounding the Mang Yang pass, site of ambushes for both French, and later American forces. Climbing in the heat, and through tough "elephant grass," my daughter turned around and said: "Dad, I think you are just a little bit crazy." Yes, the obsession.
Our post-war actions were not sufficient to stop a repeat of the same stupidities in Iraq, though I at least was successful in ensuring that my own children would not participate.
Perhaps O'Brien's most haunting story is the one which describes his mindset before he went to the Nam - "On the Rainy River." He concludes with: "... and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and home again. I survived, but it is not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war."
This book is our own "All Quiet on the Western Front," deserves more than 5 stars, and should be read in every American school.
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Great read - Not what I expected
| Customer Rating: | Not growing up during this era it was interesting to read the accounts... I found a great blog article on this book as well:
http://www.petermanseye.com/anthologies/perseverance/343-the-things-they-carried
Great read. Highly recommend the book.
Cheers. |
The ThingsThey Carried
| Customer Rating: | The book was shipped early and it was in excellent condition. I woulld recommend a transaction and would purchase again from this supplier. I am a college student and I needed to review this book for a literature honors class. Thank you for your prompt and professional transaction.
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