Honor´s Book Report

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books., 1998.

Reason, Type and Setting: I decide to read The Things They Carried by Tim O’ Brien because this book was another information book about Vietnam and I wanted to continue reading about the soldier’s experience in the war and also what were their feelings during the war. When I picked this book I was about to choose another book but I asked someone which one was better and they recommended this book to me. I also like to read war books with real people involved because I could see how a young soldier in a war acted or thought about and how a war changed his life. The genre of this book is realistic fiction and takes placed from around 1968- 1975 in Vietnam, Than Khe.

Plot: The story starts out with the author talking about what each man carries. Each man carries what he needs and also what he wants. When I read the part where O’ Brien talks about what each man carries I realized the title of the book did not all represent what they carried physically but also internally. The physical objects they carried took a small part of what they carried but an internal object or in their soul which they would keep for the rest of their lives. What they carried could be the weight, guilt or fear of each man. For example Lt. Jimmy Cross, he has the weight of all his men and the weight of trying to keep them alive. Cross also carried love in him which distracted him once and resulted in a dead soldier. Cross realized that the love that he had for Martha, a girl he like but did not know if she liked him, was too distracting so he burned the pictures that he had of her. Cross later on knew that the love for Martha did not come close to the same love that he had for his men. Cross also took all the responsibility to the death of Lavender because he did not pay attention to the battlefield so he caused someone to die. Cross and the soldiers started to carry more when Lavender died because Cross had to carry the guilt that he had because he was the reason Lavender died. The soldiers also carried his physical objects like ammo and candy that he had. Lavender interested me because he always injected himself with tranquilizers to calm himself and when he was calm he would always say “This war is so calm.” When he said that I would imagine someone else in the army doing the same as he would. Imagining that he would be a calm person when he was fighting and thinking what would happen if he was calm when he was under fire. In my opinion Lavender had the fear of the war and also what it would ring and this could explain why he always would inject himself with tranquilizers. Lavender also carried a poncho which every time someone dies it would be used to carry them to the chopper and then would be kept for extra use. The death of Lavender brought fear because the soldiers realized that any day they could also be like Lavender, dead.Kiowa is another soldier that died and he was a close friend of O’ Brien and was loved by the other soldiers. Norman Bowker thought about Kiowa when he drove around Iowa and thought that he did not do his job to save Kiowa. Kiowa was killed by a mortar hitting him on a rainy day and this made it worst because Kiowa’s body was not found for a long time. Kiowa was launched head first into the ground so when his body was found the soldiers took them a hard time to take the body out. Bowker was a soldier that carried the weight of his father because his father wanted him to get medal from the war but Bowker did not know if he could get any medals. Bowker later on got seven medals and almost and eighth one. The eighth one he did not receive because he did not have the courage to save Kiowa. Bowker did not tell the story of Kiowa to his father. Bowker did not just carry the weight of his father’s pressure for him getting medals but he also carried the guilt of Kiowa’s death. He also carried the weight of trying to make a life after the war because he did not know what to do. When Kiowa died the emotions, the soldiers had about him carried throughout the war and throughout their whole lives. Something that the soldiers would do to help them forget about these kind emotions were to be sent to Japan. The way that you would be sent to Japan is by getting injured in combat which some soldiers would injure themselves so they would get sent to Japan. O’Brien was sent to Japan twice because he was shot in two occasions. The first time that O’Brien went to Japan Bob “Rat” Kiley was a young medic that took care of him. I think the O’Brien had a lot of respect to Rat because he was so young and he had lots to carry. What he carried was the death of soldiers that he did no save and might think that it was his fault. He also carried the medicine that if they did not have any people would not have a chance to live. He also carried the weight courage that he needed when he was under fire and still helped an injured soldier. When O’ Brien was shot the first time he was attended by Rat and he liked him a lot. During the war had too much stress do he purposely blows his toe off so he would not return to the war again. When O’ Brien got shot the second time a new doctor took care of him, Bobby Jorgenson. Jorgenson was not the best doctor that O’ Brien had and they would have conflicts with one another. Jorgenson did not do a good job on curing the injuries so O’ Brien had to have surgery so then he did not trust him again. What interested me in the plot was how O’Brien described the way he killed someone because of all the detail that he gave me made me felt like I was there. I was also interested how not only the physical objects the soldiers had were what O’Brien was talking about. Some of the things the soldiers carried was the weight or pressure of a situation or an emotion. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross in an example how weight was put on each man. What Cross did to put weight on himself was getting Lavender killed because he had the weight of love in him. His love distracted him and got a soldier killed girl. O’Brien also gets weight put on him because he thought a boy he killed was innocent but Kiowa tried to make him feel better. Kiowa said, “Maybe some of the other soldiers killed him and also the boy was carrying a gun so he was a threat.”By O’ Brien thinking about this situation too much added more weight to him because he supposedly killed an innocent boy.

Character: Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is around five foot four and is and young early twenties guy. Cross is a young man that is experiencing how war is like because he was drafted. He has black hair and brown eyes. Cross is distracted easily in the beginning of the book because of Martha. He carried all the guilt that he might have accumulated throughout the book and also carried the memory of the fallen men that he had. The physical objects that fallen soldiers had were also carried by Cross or by the other soldiers. Cross carries the responsibility of his men and this is much more important than anything else even Martha. Cross posses the quality of learning how to be a leader because he did not have any interest in actually participating in the army and did not care about the war. The leadership that he had improved after his first major mistake, his distraction resulting in the death of Lavender, he did not want to carry any more weight of guilt. Cross plays an important role because without him I would not have understood what O’ Brien meant with “the things they carried.” Cross made me understand what he carried, physical and morally. What he carried was love, guilt, fear, leadership, courage, and physical items that a soldier carries. Love and guilt were and obvious “thing” that he carried because he was always talking about Martha and with her he also carried guilt for Lavender and Kiowa’s death. I selected this character because the “things” that he carried were mostly in his soul and not that physical. What he carried all linked together because with love, he got distracted and this brought guilt for deaths. With guilt, fear arouse because he did not want to lose any more men for his mistakes. Leadership improved when he knew that he was in charge and he needed to protect the soldiers and leadership also brought responsibility because the responsibility of his men was very important. Cross interest me because the way that he started to carry light “things,” like love and then more weight was brought with guilt and fear. After words, his weight that he carried became a lot heavier. In the end, the plot made Cross carry more weight than anyone did because since he was the leader he needed to carry all his men’s weight as well. The weight that he carried was more than he started because the weight started to add up more during the book.

Evaluation: What I liked about this book was it informed me what kind “things” the young men in Vietnam carried, physically and morally in their souls. It also taught me how they thought during the war and how they would react in certain situations. The whole time the war was going on the men in the book did not always make the right decision. The points about life that this book taught me were to think what “things’ you might carry and how they affect you. For example everything that each man in the book carried it affected him in some way and affected the way they reacted in situations. The book taught what I carry in my soul also affects me in some way. For example if I made a mistake at school, then next time I am in that situation again, I would react differently because of what I carried before. This book was interesting because I like to read war books and I found this book giving me a lot of information of how the Vietnam War was. This book was more like an informational book then a entertaining book because it mostly informed me of what the men carried. This book compares to the war today in Iraq and how there is something that each soldier carries. Just like the men in Vietnam the “things” they carry in Iraq could be affected them or helping them live in the war. Mistakes could also be made because of what they carry just like Cross did when his love distracted him and that is why he disposed of them. The soldiers in Iraq might carry the weight of the lives of their men and the weight of survival. This book is important for others to read because the book helps people understand that the physical objects that the soldiers carried did not also help them live the war or made them soldiers to remember. The non-existing objects that they carried in their souls also helped them live the war and to survive it. If I were Cross, I would have acted in the same way because the distraction that he made in the beginning, I would also make the same mistake because I would just think of a girl I loved in the start of the war because I do not care about it. The only difference that I would do is not have made the same mistake to have Kiowa killed. Kiowa was the guilt that I would not want to carry because he should not have been killed because of a simply mistake. The ending of the book was good for me because O’ Brien told the story of each men and I found out what I wanted to learn so I did not care about the ending.

Author, Context and Trivia: Tim O’Brien also wrote If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home and In the Lake of the Woods, which I plan to read. I also know O’Brien’s book tell his experience of the Vietnam War and also how a war impacts the soldiers that fought in it. I have not read any type of book like O’Brien’s because he sends a message across to the reader by telling stories that relate to the message he wants to carry out. I plan to read In the Lake of the Woods, which should be as intriguing as this book. I fell that this book makes teenagers think twice about joining the army because it shows what kind of experiences you get while in war. It also tells how the experiences that you have experienced in war are not forgotten, but instead they are added weight to you.