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Summary: Awesome book.
Review: Movies can only do so much. It takes a book to grab people by the neck and slam them into an unfamiliar and unforgiving world where the imagination can run freely. This is the case with the Vietnam War and with the book The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. The Things They Carried is divided into several anecdotes about various facets of the war. These smaller stories are sometimes erratic, sometimes fictional, but always fascinating and poignant. Not only did The Things They Carried brilliantly depict graphic physical accounts of the war, such as scenery, weapons, and battle, the book also detailed the psychological aspects of the war. For instance, "On the Rainy River" described a confused young man's mindset towards the draft, ranging from fear of battle to coping with responsibility. "In the Field" explained the terrible guilt that overwhelmed a soldier, because he felt that he let a fellow soldier die. "Speaking of Courage" portrayed the desolation and hopelessness of a soldier who has returned from the war. Without a doubt, I was intrigued and stunned. Each of these intensely personal stories allowed readers like me, who weren't even alive during the Vietnam War, to explore the true feelings of soldiers and actually understand the experiences surrounding the war. From studying the war alone, one can only learn about the cold, hard facts. However, with The Things They Carried, I could begin to appreciate the soldiers' heroic deeds and comprehend the physical and mental pain that they carried for the rest of their lives.
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Summary: Very captivating and exciting story of the Vietnam War
Review: The Things They Carried is a historical fiction novel that was written by Tim O' Brian and contains some of the most awful truths of the Vietnam War. It tells the story of how men like Ted Carpenter, Kiowa, and O'Brien fought for survival in the harsh realities of a death zone such as the forests and fields of the small Asian country of Vietnam. The author painted into my head the sounds of the war, the explosion of gunfire, the crack of the M-16, the sounds of mortars crashing into the ground next to the men, and the most important of all, the emotional and physical struggle that the men had to deal with while lugging their equipment up and down the hills of Saigon, wondering if they were going to make it to the next day, and wondering if they would ever see the ones that they had cared about the most in their lives. This is an excellent book, because of the detail that the author used to describe the pain and suffering of the men and their experience in the war. Even thought this book is a Historical Fiction, it was based on the author's experience in the Vietnam War. For instance, in the book, the character Tim kills a man. In Vietnam, the author actually did not kill someone. But unfortunately, some of the terrors and horrors of Vietnam were actual experiences, and that fact was the main reason that I enjoyed the book so much, because the author turned his own experience into a different more creative version of his experience of the war.
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Summary: Soldiers at Heart?
Review: The Things They Carried is an emotional look at the lives of the soldiers in the Vietnam War. O'Brien tells the secrets of war. He shares the burdens that each man has in his heart. The way each person's death and each decision is eating away at them on the inside, but on the outside they act tough. Reading this book helped me to understand the psychological motives that allow people to cope with even the most alien of worlds. Displacing themselves from the war was a main tool the soldiers used. O'Brien made it clear that stories were what sustained the men, and repeating them was what empowered them. The final chapter of the story, in which Tim described Linda's tragic death, was the undercurrent of the whole war. Each chapter contained unspoken love and a deep sorrow for what they were forced to leave behind. Memories of the pain and intense feelings will haunt the soldiers for ever. However, it is only in their dreams and stories that they can ever change and deal with this era of their lives.
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Summary: The Things They Carried Review
Review: The Things They Carried is one of the greatest books I have read about the Vietnam War. It includes everything a good war novel should have. Tim O'Brien just does not focus on firefights and climatic battles. He shows you the feelings and morals of the soldiers he worked with. There are serious stories with in this book like the people they killed and the friends they lost. There are good stories about jokes/games that they played during their time in Vietnam. The story of Henry Dobbins is one of my personal favorites; it's about how he wears his girlfriends' stockings around his neck for good luck. He was believed to be the luckiest soldier in his platoon, after stepping on a bouncing betty landmine and it fails to detonate. Not only is this book about Vietnam war itself but what his life is like after the war. Tim was wounded in combat, and lost some of his close friends. Tim tells the reader about how he is still haunted by the events that took place in Vietnam. Tim even returns to Vietnam to find closure of one of his friends that he lost. He also tells a story of a soldier who cracks under the pressure of war (AKA shell shock).
In my opinion this is a really good book for any one who has served in the armed forces or is thinking about it. Tim gives the reader a detailed look of life during a war. He shows what people are like after a war. He shares a story about one soldier who returns from Vietnam. The soldier's life was totally changed, his friends were gone and the women he loved had married someone else. He had felt that he had died back in Vietnam. This book is not good for a reader who wants an emotionless warrior soldier that kills every thing until there is nothing left. This book tells the truth about what happens during a war with a person's life. This book was a good read, not to long and dry like some war books. All the stories serve a purpose and have a moral.
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Summary: A Highly Recommended Book
Review: The Things They Carried was a thought-provoking and inspirational book. I originally stumbled across this book as a summer reading assignment for a high school English class, but soon after starting the book I became hooked. The book has been called both a novel and a collection of short stories. I believe it is the latter; however, all the stories are interwoven in such a fashion that they all blend together forming a single story line. The thing I liked most about this book was that it keeps you guessing what is fiction and what might be true. This happens mostly because the name of the main character is Tim O'Brien which is also the name of the author of the book. The book provides a first-hand look into the Vietnam War, and consequently I would recommend it to anyone who would like to read a great book.
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Summary: The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction By Tim O'Brien
Review: The Things They Carried was a wonderful book depicting the fictional lives of Alpha Company during the Vietnam War. The book offered O'Brien's views in the form of a collection of stories that takes place in the U.S. during the war, in Vietnam, and in postwar U.S. Tim O'Brien's view of the war was unique because he had actually been there. Through creating fictional stories from his own true-life experience, a unique writing style was created. The Characters in The Things They Carried contained a mixture of personalities and characteristics. To me the characters contained a level of insecurity and unpredictable violence. One example of these evident unpredictable behaviors was when Rat Kiley strapped a C4 explosive to a dog and blew it up. This random and violent behavior was evident in almost every character and added to the build up and release of conflict in the book. One chapter in The Things They Carried stood out among the rest. In chapter 17, In The Field, the idea of war and its consequences was identified. The squad questions whose fault it was when Kiowa was hit and killed in a rice paddy. This chapter truly questioned my ideas and reasoning behind the fault of war and who should be responsible for death. Through my reading of this chapter, and the book, I gained a feeling that war and killing is not just a single person's fault, but rather the fault of all those who participate in combat against a so called foe. Tim O'Brien's use of combining fiction with reality offered a new way of explaining what actually happened in Vietnam. I felt that his technique was unique, but at times was a little to strait forward. O'Brien would actually point out that he was making his own stories up as he went along. His act of telling us the truth about the reality of his story took too much out of the plot and denied a sound ending to the book. Overall, the book was entertaining and offered good insight to what Vietnam was like to Tim O'Brien.
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Summary: Simply Amazing
Review: This book is indescribable in its wisdom it brings to its readers. Definitely one that more of today's youth should read and understand.
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Summary: A Difficult Read, but worth the effort
Review: Tim O'Brien has an interesting approach in this book--I am not sure whether to call it a collection of short stories or a novel--to remembering his time as grunt in Vietnam. It is difficult to tell where memory ends and imagination begins. We travel through that mixture of boredom and terror that is the staple of just about all wars with the men of Alpha Company. As we do this, we see a deeply human side of the war. There is little valor, less cowardice, and what see of the war is not the drama of battle in all its frightfulness--but simply death and fear and abiding sadnesses and traumas that are only dulled through the passage of time, or not at all.
O'Brien's experience as a grunt would be interesting enough on its own if he simply told stories of his experiences in the field. What makes this book outstanding though is how O'Brien weaves back and forth from his own experiences as a young man to the time of the writing of this book. Doing this allows him to expostulate as a critic on the veracity of war stories and how to tell a real one story from a phony, or how he broached the subject of the war with his daughter when she was old enough to ask him if he had killed anyone in the war, and also to entice the reader into constantly trying to guess where memory ends and fiction begins while asserting that it really does not matter.
Finally, the book is as much about the war as how O'Brien figured out how to cope with all the horror that he had seen. It is all about the things that carried home from the war and will never be able to drop because they are a part of his experience
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Summary: A Laugh-Out-Loud Novel that is Also Quite Serious.
Review: Tim O'Brient, the award winning writer presents a war novel in the setting of Vietnam. In its explict discription of every event true or false, O'Brient manupilates words to deliver them straight to the readers thoughts. Besides the struggle of remembering the characters in the beginning of the book, the reader will sure to enjoy his story of himself, his comerades, and the things they carried physically and mentally. It is filled with griefs, love, terror, commedy, and disgusting truth one will never forget.
Get your copy of The things they carried today!
Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece of Human feelings and actions
Review: Tim Obrien's "the thinbgs they carried" has little or nothing to do with war. The book instaed speaks of the human enedavour and the effect that war has on the soul. The book it self made me feel as if I was bleeding to death while i read. It hurt. Plain and simple O'brien hurts in this Novel. It truly doesnt matter what is true and what is not because either way the book makes us all feel. Maybe not for all this is still the best book i have read in ages.
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