The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried

Overview:

A classic, life-changing meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling, with more than two-million copies in print

Depicting the men of Alpha Company—Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three—the stories in The Things They Carried opened our eyes to the nature of war in a way we will never forget. It is taught everywhere, from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing, and in the decades since its publication it has never failed to challenge our perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, and courage, longing, and fear.

Quick Review:
Ages: 16+
Reason for specific age: Violent/grusome scenes, a lot of cursing (But keep in mind it IS a war story and thats how things were)
Stars: 5
Reason: The Things They Carried was humbling and gave me so much more appreciation for the men and women who fight for our country.

Full Review:
I'm normally not a war-book/war-story kind of person. But then again, I haven't exactly read a REAL war story before. The only ones I have read are fictional or "based" off a true story. Never had I read an account of a war by someone who's actually been in a war. Authors and Hollywood directors who try to portray wars, when they have never been in one, are one phonies. After reading The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, I realized how little people understand war at all or at least the Vietnam War.

So, how did I get my hands on The Things They Carried? Well, we were going over the Vietnam War in History class and had read the first chapter of the book. The way O'Brien starts out the book is flawless. He starts out with talking about the things they literally carried. I go backpacking for a week every summer and when he started explaining the weight of all the different items and the reasoning of why they needed them I instantly related to what he was saying.  From comic books, bibles, and love letters to guns, large radios, and food. He explains how it depended on the man's size and the situation as to how much he carried or what he carried. He also tells the reader how the men carried not only physical things but also emotions, memories and fears.

This book doesn't really have a through and through plot line. It's basically like a collection of stories that have to do with various scenes in the war and even scenes back home when the men returned. That's something I liked about this book. You knew the next chapter would be about the war, but you didn't know what story O'Brien was going to tell next. My favorite chapters (or stories you could say) were "Sweet Heart of Song Tra Bong," and "The Lives of the Dead."

Both, of course, included a girl. In the "Sweet Heart of Song Tra Bong," a young lady comes to visit her boyfriend over in Vietnam. It was a story Rat Kiley (one of the main characters) told. He had been assigned to a  medical detachment near Tra Bong, so it wasn't like she was going into the line of fire while visiting her boyfriend but throughout the chapter Vietnam changes her. "The Lives of the Dead," though took place at home and was a story from when O'Brien was a young boy. It was about how he liked this girl when they were about 8 or 9 years old and I really don't want to spoil it so I won't tell you the rest (but I'm telling you now, I was sort of surprised).

Anyways, this book was great. Bitter-sweet really. Tim O'Brien did an amazing job when it came to emphasizing specific scenes or memories that effected him the most. The Things They Carried was humbling and it just gives me so much more appreciation for the men and women who fight for our country.