Overview:

• This wiki is about one of the author Tim O'Brien's most famous works, The Things They Carried. It is a collection of interwoven stories describing the Vietnam War and the impact it has on the soldiers who experienced it. It is widely considered as, "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." (Google eBook)

Summary:

The book is made up of interrelated short stories in various different settings. It is a war memoir but also like an autobiography. The author, Tim O'Brien seems to make meaning out of his memories of Vietnam and what he experienced in his service. In this work, O'Brien discusses the story of Jimmy Cross, a naive and inexperienced leader of Alpha Company. He also describes the plan he had to flee to Canada in order to avoid the draft and the feelings he experienced throughout his trip, namely cowardice for participating in a war in which he did not believe. In another story he describes the first time he killed a man as well as recalling the death of his friend and soldier, Kiowa who was a soft spoken Native American who he felt a strong connection to. O'Brien also tells of a soldier who brought his girlfriend to Vietnam and the tumultuous event of her being fascinated by the war and never returning home. "Speaking of Courage" presents a story about Norman Bowker, a Vietnam comrade who finds difficulty adjusting to civilian life once home from the war. Bowker makes the suggestion in a letter to O'Brien about writing a story about a veteran with problems adapting and dealing with severe survivor guilt. The concluding story, O'Brien tells of the first dead corpse he saw before being in Vietnam. It was a girl he knew as a little boy who had died from cancer. O'Brien draws similarities in animating her in his mind as well as Vietnam and ultimately comes to the conclusion that he writes these stories to save his own life. (Cliffs Notes)

Characters:

• Tim O'Brien - The protagonist of the book, as well as the narrator. He muses that as a 21 year old man, he felt an obligation to his family and country to serve in the war but ultimately decides that he uses his telling of the stories as a coping mechanism to channel his guilt and perplexity at the atrocities he witnessed in Vietnam such as the death of his fellow soldiers, as well as members of the Vietcong, specifically a man he killed himself.
• Jimmy Cross - A hesitant and unprepared lieutenant of Alpha Company, Jimmy Cross always finds his thoughts to be with the girl he is in love with back home, Martha. However, his love is unrequited. Cross is well meaning but unsure of how to lead his men. He feels immense guilt for the deaths of two of his men because of his inability to keep his mind off of Martha.
• Mitchell Sanders - A well liked soldier and a strong influence on O'Brien. He acts almost as a father figure towards Tim, and has the qualities of devotion and kindness. He is a storyteller that has major impact on O'Brien.
• Kiowa -  He is O'Brien's closest friend and an embodiment of balance and calmness even during the most horrifying of times in the war.
  
• Norman Bowker - A man who personifies how the horrific events in war can damage a human being. He is quiet and unassuming during the war. The death of one of his close friends in the war gives him a huge blow and his letter to O'Brien is poignant and powerful. 
• Henry Dobbins - A simple man, who is the machine gunner for the platoon. His appearance as a burly man, contrasts with his profound decency and is the opposite of the problems in Vietnam.
• Bob "Rat" Kiley - He is the platoon's medic who O'Brien admires for his medical skill, but succumbs to the stresses of the war and purposefully shoots off his own toe in order to leave his post.
• Curt Lemon - A childish and careless soldier in the Alpha Company who is killed when he steps on a rigged mortar round.
• Ted Lavender - He is a young, scared soldier who is the first to die in Alpha Company. He takes tranquilizers quite often. His death further signifies the unnecessary loss of human life in a nonsensical war.
• Azar - A seemingly mean spirited soldier of Alpha Company who pokes fun and torments Vietnamese civilians as well as the corpses of Vietnamese soldiers. His humanity is shown when he must assist in unearthing a fellow soldier's body from the muck.
• Bobby Jorgenson -  Medic who takes the place of Rat Kiley. 
• Elroy Berdahl - The man who lives near the Canadian border and takes O'Brien in for 6 days as he contemplates going to war or escaping the draft.
• Kathleen - O'Brien's daughter who serves as a figure that represents the ignorant outsider but gives him a different perspective on his war experience.
• Mary Anne Bell - Young woman who is the high school sweetheart of a soldier in Alpha Company. She arrives in Vietnam as innocent as could be but ends up falling in love with the darkness of the place and gains a respect for death.
• Mark Fossie - A medic who realizes flying his girlfriend to Vietnam may have not been the best idea after all.
• Linda - O'Brien's first love who died of a brain tumor in the fifth grade. Her death is his first dealing with mortality and is powerful in that O'Brien understands how storytelling can keep memories alive. (SparkNotes)
  

Key Stylistic Features: 

The stories throughout are semi-autobiographical. O'Brien is an acclaimed story teller and his skill as such is easy to see in The Things They Carried. Much of what he writes is considered "meta fiction" which is, "fiction that discusses the function and effect of storytelling." (Taormina) Throughout this work O'Brien mentions the significance of stories often times being the real truth and that memory and imagination help people to create and live their lives.

Structure/Form:

Tim O'Brien is revered as a pioneering author in the usage of fictional prose coming from the era of the Vietnam War. The novel is made up of several short stories depicting the protagonist's experiences during Vietnam. It is considered fiction, however some of these events may have happened or may have not. This book is narrated by the literal character, Tim O'Brien who does the story telling while also giving commentary. Parts of the book are conversational when discussing the talks that soldiers have with one another. 

Primary & Secondary Thematic Concerns:

Physical and Emotional Burdens

The "things" the soldiers carry are both literal and figurative. They carry weapons, ammunition, water, pocket knives, gauze, and the like. But, also they carry emotional loads of guilt, longing, terror, love, and grief.  (SparkNotes)

The Subjection of Truth of Storytelling

Throughout the entirety of the book, O'Brien blurs the line between fact and fiction. The reader is unable to truly know if the events described in the book even happened to O'Brien himself. He signifies this with the soldiers contradicting themselves. O'Brien's point is to make it clear that the truth of a war story is less important than the telling of a story. He's displaying the struggle the soldier has connecting to his audience when speaking about their war experiences. What the war meant to those who fought in it and how it changed them is of more significance than the technical facts surrounding the war's events. (SparkNotes)

Fear of Shame as Motivation

O'Brien is able to point out one of if not the most powerful motivating factor of participating in war is fear of being viewed as a coward by one's peers. He shows this when describing the time in which he traveled to the border of Canada and contemplated joining the war or escaping the draft. He was concerned with what his family and community would think if he did not serve, which ultimately led him to fight. This theme is evident throughout the book and shows the audience the "...misguided expectations of a group of people important to a character and that character's uncertainty regarding a proper course of action." (SparkNotes)

Quotations: 

• "And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It’s about sunlight. 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. It’s about love and memory. It’s about sorrow. It’s about sisters who never write back and people who never listen."

• “A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. ” 

• “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.”  

• “It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead.”  

• “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.” 

• “It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. When you’re afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood- you give it together, you take it together.” 

• "I don’t feel like anybody mistreats me. Except sometimes people act too nice, too polite, like they’re afraid they might ask the wrong question. But I shouldn't bitch. One thing I hate - really hate - is all those whiner-vets. Guys sniveling about how they didn't get any parades. Such absolute crap. I mean, who in his right mind wants a parade? Or getting is back clapped by a bunch of patriotic idiots who don’t know jack about what it feels like to kill people or get shot at or sleep in the rain or watch your buddy go down underneath the mud? Who needs it?"

(Quotes taken from Goodreads.com)

Reception/Legacy:

The Things They Carried is still a highly acclaimed book to this day, as much as it was in 1990. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was also included on the list of works for the "World Book Night U.S." in 2012, a nationwide effort to share books and reading with others who may not be so inclined to read or do not have access to printed books. 

"[A] marvel of storytelling...a vital, important book - a book that not only matters to the reader interested in Vietnam, but to anyone interested in the craft of writing as well." - New York Times

"Simply marvelous...A striking sequence of stories that twist and turn and bounce off each other...Wars seldom produce good short stories, but two or three of these seem as good as any short stories written about any way...Immensely affecting." Newsweek

"The Things They Carried carries not only the soldiers' intangible burdens - grief, terror, love, longing - but also the weight of memory, the terrible gravity of guilt. It carries them, though, with a lovely stirring grace, because it is as much about the redemptive power of stories as it is about Vietnam." - Orlando Sentinel

"A powerful yet lyrical work of fiction." - The Associated Press

"O'Brien's meditations - on war and memory, on darkness and light - suffuse the entire work with a kind of poetic form, making for a highly original, fully realized novel...Beautifully honest...The book is persuasive in its desperate hope that stories can save us." Publishers Weekly

Further Reading:

Other works by Tim O'Brien include:

If I Die In a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (1973)

Going After Cacciato (1978) - Won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction

In the Lake of the Woods (1994)

and more

Works Cited:

http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/novels/guides/authors/obrien.htm

Taormina, Agatha, Dr. "O'Brien, Tim." Author Profiles. Northern Virginia 
     Community College, n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. 

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/things-they-carried.html

"The Things They Carried." Cliffs Notes. Cliffs Notes, n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013. 

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/thingscarried/

"The Things They Carried." SparkNotes. SparkNotes, n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1235619-the-things-they-carried

"The Things They Carried Quotes." Good Reads. Goodreads, n.d. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.