THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

2. Research the anti-Vietnam War movement. What objections did the protestors have to the war? Find out what arguments they used against maintaining the war. What kind of rhetoric did they use? Research Vietnam veterans’ involvement in the anti-war movement. Compare their arguments to O’Brien’s objections to the war. Read […]

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4. Comment on three characters’ loss of innocence in the novel, more specifically how these characters move from innocence of war to experience of the ravages of Vietnam. What is the catalyst for their change? Do you think these characters completely lose their innocence, and if they do, how does […]

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air strikes Air attacks on a ground or naval target. AK-47 Basic infantry weapon of the NVA and Viet Cong. American Legion An organization of veterans of the armed forces of the U.S., founded in 1919. AO Area of operations. Army Commendation Medal Awarded to any member of the Armed […]

Read more Study Help Full Glossary for The Things They Carried

For each of these writers, O’Brien included, war is chaotic, and writing about war, using words to understand an experience, is a way to impose order and control over that chaos. For each, the war is depicted at points with visceral and emotional intensity and overwhelming sensation. These authors yoke […]

Read more Critical Essays The Things They Carried and Questions of Genre

O’Brien struggles to hold onto the obverse of this animalism, this barbarism, which is a sort of hyper-civility. He succeeds in doing this by continually offering a highly self-conscious and self-aware cultural criticism that frequently draws on the archetypal works that are the foundation of western civilization like Plato’s Republic. […]

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This, too, gives rise to the meta-textuality of the novel. O’Brien’s style is one marked by examining an event from a distance, either spatially or temporally, and the creation of “O’Brien” allows for this distance. O’Brien comments on the usefulness of telling stories by creating a character who shares his […]

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O’Brien’s novel is untraditional in a second narrative sense as well, due in part to the non-linear presentation of the novel’s action. O’Brien does not maintain temporal continuity; he jumps from the past to the present and then to the distant past and then back to the present. In a […]

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Bao Dai, the leader of the French-recognized faction, also claimed that his party, and not Minh’s, had authority over the country. By 1950, the Truman administration had begun sending American military advisors to Vietnam to support the French. Eventually, the United States began lending financial support to France’s war against […]

Read more Critical Essays The Things They Carried in a Historical Context

Like “O’Brien,” Tim O’Brien, born William Timothy O’Brien, Jr., spent his early life first in Austin, Minnesota, and later in Worthington, Minnesota, a small, insulated community near the borders of Iowa and South Dakota. The first of three children, O’Brien was born on October 1, 1946, at the beginning of […]

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Another notable attribute of Dobbins is his intense commitment to following his moral code. Just as Dobbins is “drawn toward sentimentality” in his personal beliefs and his approach to the war, he is similarly insulated from the psychological and physical trauma of war through the power of his belief. Dobbins […]

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