I selected this book because I thought that it would be appropriate to read it since we are now focusing about different types of wars. This book is a work of fiction because all in all, it's an autobiography, writer's memoirs and different short fictional stories. It is a collection of interconnected short stories. The novel takes place in the late 1960s and late 1980s in Vietnam and Massachusetts.
Plot: Tim O'Brien, the protagonist, starts off by describing an event that occurred in the middle of his Vietnam experience. "The Things They Carried" refers to the variety of things that his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company brought on their missions like guilt and fear, matches, morphine, M-16 rifles and M&M candies. Through a variety of different stories, O'Brien portrays the characters of men whom he served and shows the meaning about the war from different perspectives. Lt. Jimmy Cross, as what O'Brien described, is an inexperienced leader of the Alpha Company. He had a group of soldiers, including O'Brien, who were pretty young and unprepared for the Vietnam War. These soldiers also carried pictures of their girlfriends, sadness and confusion but don’t show it because they don't want to look silly to the other soldiers. There are times in the novel when these soldiers reveal their emotions in heartfelt or comical ways. While the soldiers are in Vietnam, they get paranoid and lose their sense of morality and justices. They become cold-hearted and angry because no one back home understands what they are going through. As the war went on, soldiers died and memories were just left. Tim knows that the stories of people's lives can bring them back to life.
Character: Tim O'Brien is a pacifist who rationalizes his participation in Vietnam by coming to the conclusion that his feelings of commitment toward his family and country are stronger influences than his own politics. In the first place, he didn't want to get drafted for the war and decided to drive off to Canada but didn't. He was drafted into the Alpha Company and was sent to Vietnam. He faces so many challenges and witnesses the killings of his fellow soldiers and killing others. When the war was over, he used his skill to tell stories in order to deal with his guilt and confusion over the things he witnessed in Vietnam. He was the protagonist of the story and describes everything that happened and everyone who was with him. In the end I feel that this character grew a lot after the war because being able to talk about what happened in order to move shows a slow progress of resiliency which is better than being traumatized your whole life.
Evaluation: I really liked this novel because although it was a mix of fiction and autobiographies, it showed different perspectives of the soldiers who fought through that war. I learned that telling stories about people can make you feel that they're closer to you, like what O'Brien did. The soldiers do this so they don't have to think about the fact that their friends are actually dead or that they just killed a real person or another human being. Stories change but the memories are kept alive by the storyteller. I would recommend this book to others because they can learn a lot about the war and what soldiers went through. I definitely recommend this book those who are interested in wars because it gives different perspectives of different people.
Tim O'Brien was born on October 1, 1946 at the beginning of the post-World War II era. He describes himself as an avid reader as a child and was into magic tricks. Like any other American kid, he spent his summer playing baseball. He was drafted for military service in 1968, two weeks after completing his undergraduate degree at Macalester in St. Paul, Minnesota. He opposed the Vietnam War and thought it was all wrong and he decided to go to Canada unlike his alter ego who decides not to go. O'Brien completed and published other major books like If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home.
Labels: Book Report