The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien

Oct 2009 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

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. 
 
The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.
 
Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing.

The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Ratings and reviews

Tim O'Brien has created a novel about war. The things they carried is a book of struggle, pressure, and adversity. Some people can't handle pressure and in this novel Tim O'Brien shows you not how to handle pressure but what happens to people under pressure and adversity. when someone is at there all time low how do they respond. Tim found a way to survive and many of his close friends didn't. his struggles begain in a war with many friends and it ends with him being the only survivor. trench wars, cave invasions, and sniper battles leaves your mind in disbelief. i recommend this novel to anyone who is into war and gore. its a great book, i personally love the detail in each battle scene.

This story brought to mind Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," due to the mixture of fiction and realism. The story tells of a platoon of soldiers and their experiences in Vietnam. It gives an interesting insight into the make-up of soldiers on active duty and serves as a comparison to today's army fighting in Afghanistan. The reader learns what various soldiers carry in the field. Besides the normal items such as their weapons, we see that one man carried a sewing kit, another had a New Testament, still another carried Dr. Scholl's foot powder, and that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried the letters from his love, Martha, a college student at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. In a sad manner, we also discover tha Martha didn't share Jimmy's love but thought of him more as a friend. The author also give the reader an idea of some of the things the soldiers did on their off duty time. We learn of the soldier called Kiowa, who was teaching Rat Kelly a rain dance and another soldier adopting a stray puppy. This information made the soldiers seem more real. I enjoyed the book, which is made up of linked stories. However, I felt that it was more of a journal of the author, Tim O'Brien's experiences in Vietnam, than a novel. What appealed to me was the uniqueness and descriptions of men, who are my age, and what they went through in the war.

The only reason I am even giving this a one star is because it says it would not be rated and I want it counted as a lousy book. This is NOT a book for high schoolers to read. No wonder teenagers talk like they do if the are allowed to read this book. This book would serve no purpose for a 15 or 16 year old to read except to make him wonder what this character would do to a virgin if he tied her to a bed. It is appalling that schools have approved this for high school reading and then make a fuss when kids use the same language in the halls or classrooms. If this were a movie, it would be rated R and the teens would not be allowed to view it. It needs to be banned from high schools.

About the author

TIM O’BRIEN received the National Book Award for Going After Cacciato. Among his other books are The Things They Carried, Pulitzer Finalist and a New York Times Book of the Century, and In the Lake of the Woods, winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. He was awarded the Pritzker Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing.