the things they carried essay topics

The Things They Carried

64 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Stories 1-3

Stories 4-6

Stories 7-9

Stories 10-13

Stories 14-16

Stories 17-19

Stories 20-22

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

The Things They Carried is made up of 22, tightly related short stories. Why do you think the author chose to break up his narrative into individual stories rather than writing a traditional novel?

In several stories throughout the book, the narrator says, “I’m forty-three years old, true, and I’m a writer now” (171). Why do you think the narrator repeats this phrase so often? Does it change the way you read the stories and if so, how?

As the men travel through the war zone, they encounter many helpful locals, such as the women who tries to warn them not to camp by the field and the old man who guides them through the minefields. Why does the author bother to include portraits of such characters? How do they affect the overall moral tone of the book?

Related Titles

By Tim O'Brien

Going After Cacciato

If I Die in a Combat Zone

In the Lake of the Woods

Featured Collections

American Literature

View Collection

Audio Study Guides

Community Reads

Creative Nonfiction

Memorial Day Reads

Military Reads

Short Story Collections

Vietnam War

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.

• 168,891 literary resources
• 172 content providers
• 53,470 books

The Things They Carried Thesis Statements and Essay Topics

Below you will find four outstanding thesis statements / paper topics for “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brian can be used as essay starters. All four incorporate at least one of the themes found in “The Things They Carried” and are broad enough so that it will be easy to find textual support, yet narrow enough to provide a focused clear thesis statement. These thesis statements offer a short summary of “The Things They Carried” in terms of different elements that could be important in an essay. You are, of course, free to add your own analysis and understanding of the plot or themes to them. Using the essay topics below in conjunction with the list of  important quotes from “The Things They Carried”  on our quotes page, you should have no trouble connecting with the text and writing an excellent essay.

Topic #1: The things they carried

There is a list given for each soldier of the items he carried. Some of the items can be physically touched. Other items can only be felt or described. For each soldier, the items and emotions he carries are significant. Describe how the choice of items relates to each character. Include arguments where applicable about how the items affect others and each soldier’s survival. Determine which items hold the most value.

 Topic #2: Kiowa

Kiowa is one of the many soldiers who is killed. His death is described in three of the stories. Explore the reasons why Kiowa’s death stands out to so many of the other soldiers. Why is it that so many of them claim responsibility and guilt for his loss of life? Illustrate what actions could have been taken to avoid Kiowa’s death and the guilt on the minds of so many soldiers.

Topic #3: Common themes

Although the stories are written and compiled by O’Brien and are labeled as fiction, O’Brien draws on his own experiences during the Vietnam War and the experiences of others. Many of the stories share common themes such as love, loss, regret of things left behind and left undone, violence, and dissatisfaction. The soldiers that survive come home severely changed by their experiences. Trace a common thread throughout the stories and relay how it is significant.

Topic #4: Controversy surrounding the Vietnam War

There was much controversy surrounding the Vietnam War. Soldiers were sent to kill the bad guys, only to learn that they were often firing on women and children. Throughout the stories, the soldiers reveal how disillusioned they became during and after the time they spent fighting. Choose one or two of the stories and examine the disillusionment that is described. What elements and events contribute to this disappointment in the military and the United States.

Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Trauma — The Things They Carried Theme Essay

The Things They Carried Theme Essay

• Categories: Trauma

About this sample

Words: 630 |

Published: Mar 5, 2024

Words: 630 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof Ernest (PhD)

Verified writer

• Expert in: Nursing & Health

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

4 pages / 1780 words

7 pages / 2983 words

3 pages / 1314 words

3 pages / 1567 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Trauma

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) refer to a range of traumatic experiences that occur during childhood and have the potential to negatively impact an individual's physical, emotional, and social well-being. This essay aims [...]

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), characterized by the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states within an individual, remains a complex and often misunderstood mental health condition. Notably [...]

This essay is going to be exploring how trauma during childhood can possibly cause mental health problems later in adult life. It is now widely accepted that distressing and traumatic events during childhood can cause mental [...]

The Farm Life Inside Angola, a documentary film directed by Jonathan Stack and Wilbert Rideau, offers a rare and revealing look into the lives of incarcerated individuals at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as [...]

An impulsive change of emotions came over me which was irreversible. All over sudden, concerns and questions of worldly prestige, life success, and financial status become irrelevant all at once. The increased wave of flames and [...]

Trauma is a ghost, and memories can be haunting. Each has the ability to drive a person to madness, or to inspire a certain enlightened strength in him. The capacity of someone to act with resilience, despite the severity of his [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

The Things They Carried

By tim o'brien, the things they carried essay questions.

Is the book told in first person or third person? How does this affect the seeming reliability of the narrative?

The Things They Carried is narrated, alternately, in third person and first person. The first person "I" narratives feel trustworthy and personal, but O'Brien warns the reader against this very pitfall. He writes that war stories should always be mistrusted, no matter who is telling them.

What is the role of shame in the soldiers' lives? Does shame propel them to heroism or stupidity?

Shame is the reason that Tim O'Brien decided to go to Vietnam. Many of the characters feel shame as a primary motivator, too. Not only does it lead them to war, but it keeps them there. It is the one thing that keeps them from shooting themselves in the foot so that they would be discharged from the army or some similar such act. But some characters, like Curt Lemon, think that shame impels them to heroism, not stupidity.

In "The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong how does gender seem to affect reactions to war?

Mary Anne is one of the few females featured in the book, and her experience seems to suggest that war is a great equalizer between the genders. When she arrives she is innocent, sexy, and very feminine. After the war "gets to her" she becomes a killer like the others.

The central topic of The Things They Carried is the Vietnam War, but the book is also about writing and storytelling. How would you describe O'Brien's conception of the role of fiction?

O'Brien writes that fiction serves a higher purpose than merely recounting what happened. He writes that a good war story makes you wonder "is it true?" It makes you care about the answer to that question. After having provoked that authentic feeling, it does not actually matter if the story is true or not. Fiction is as good as experience.

A reoccuring theme throughout the book is expressed by the title. What do the characters carry aside from physical objects?

The characters carry emotions like sadness and fear. Jimmy Cross carries responsibility for the lives of his men. O'Brien sets up a dichotomy between weight and lightness, with war always described in terms of weight, love in terms of lightness. His characters are condemned to carry the war for the rest of their lives.

What role does Kathleen play in this book? Does she make her father feel guilty?

Kathleen, O'Brien's daughter, is a stand-in for the reader. She listens to her father's stories just as the reader does. But because she is a character she can ask him questions, including whether or not he has ever killed anyone. O'Brien's makes a guilt-tinged decision whether or not to lie, or make up stories for his daughter.

Soldiers' tales are often an opportunity for the teller to swagger, to play the hero, to seem macho. How does O'Brien portray this macho culture?

Because O'Brien is so ambivalent toward the whole project of war, it is not surprising that this book disapproves of macho storytelling. Curt Lemon is the most macho character, a man who asks a dentist to pull out a perfectly good tooth to demonstrate that he is not a sissy. Lemon dies the most horrible death imaginable, but he is still the least likeable character in the book.

Read the dedication page of the book. How is it part of the narrative?

O'Brien dedicated his book to his characters, the men he served with in Vietnam. This exemplifies the uneasy position of the book with regard to fiction and non-fiction. The author insists it is a fictional account. But elements like the dedication continue to point to the reality of what happened in Vietnam.

O'Brien writes that a story is "like a kind of dreaming." How so?

O'Brien tells war stories partly so that he can relive them again and again. He argues that each time time one tells or reads a story one breathes life into the characters. When the story is over, they are dead again, he writes. For O'Brien, fiction also resembles dreamingbecause both are involuntary: he cannot help that his experiences haunt him.

What is the role of death in this book? Is it a release from a nightmarish life, or something to be feared?

O'Brien, the narrator, is a profoundly non-religious man. For him, death is the end of the story. The sense of senselessness pervading this book is rooted in two things: the Vietnam War seems to have no real cause or justification, and the young men killed there reach the end of their lives and effectively disappear. O'Brien's non-belief in the afterlife lends a special tinge of horror to the already horrifying events.

The Things They Carried Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Things They Carried is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

is this a war story, per se? if so who is the main character, and why?

This particular story is more about sexual longing than war. Mark Fossie seems to be the main character who wants to import his girlfriend.

What is it that Jimmy cross carries with him? What do they represent?

Jimmy always carries letters from Martha. His identity and hopes for the future are part of those letters.

How does Tim kill his first enemy

I think with a grenade.

Study Guide for The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried study guide contains a biography of Tim O'Brien, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Things They Carried
• The Things They Carried Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

• Rationalizing the Fear Within
• Physical and Psychological Burdens
• Role of Kathleen and Linda in The Things They Carried
• Let’s Communicate: It’s Not About War
• Turning Over a New Leaf: Facing the Pressures of Society

Lesson Plan for The Things They Carried

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Things They Carried
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Things They Carried Bibliography

O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”: Literary Analysis

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

The things they carried: critical analysis and impressions.

The essay analyzes “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. This collection of short stories is devoted to a platoon of American soldiers who fight in the Vietnam War. The book is a powerful blend of fact and fiction that leaves the reader with a lasting impression of fear, love, and gratitude for the novel’s components. When describing the tangibles, O’Brien incorporates weight and number to force the pressures of the soldiers onto the reader.

As the plot unfolds, O’Brien moves the reader through scenes of war, telling multiple stories of love, death, and friendships combining with a narrative. More specifically, O’Brien incorporates interruptions of himself talking to us like the reader is watching a movie, and he keeps pressing pause to explain a scene that we might not have fully grasped. In this paper, a literary analysis of “The Things They Carried” will be presented to reveal the significance of the act of “listening” to its reader.

O’Brien takes the reader through a series of repeated utterances as depicted through cyclic stories of love, war, and death vividly, engaging the reader into an active session of a movie-like scene. More importantly, several pauses are encountered throughout the story, as the author tries to explain some examples which the reader may not have otherwise understood.

Throughout the book, O’Brien tells the audience about war stories, in which some instances remain doubtful about their validity. As seen from the following quote, Tim’s war story makes the reader to render it invalid when he says the stories are mere imaginations: “The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you…..memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head….. There is the illusion of aliveness…” (O’Brien 230).

As O’Brien reveals to the reader various scenarios telling stories of death and friendship, warfare conditions, and love relationships, he incorporates disruption of himself talking to the audience as if they are watching a film. It is the author’s complex blend of fact and fiction, which takes the reader into an in-depth understanding of the underlying implication of “The Things They Carried” short stories. The analysis shows that the novel sounds more to a narrative than the story, where every twinge is factual beyond reality.

Particularly, O’Brien engrosses the reader into an active listening-like session through his utterances of vivid description of war scenarios, making the novel more involving than just mere storytelling. As seen from the quote, “If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste…then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie…” (O’Brien 68).

As has been noted, O’Brien presents severe events in fiction as a strategy to emphasize how dangerous the situation was during the time of the war. Concerning the novel’s title, the soldiers are brought out having a variety of objects and practices they carried in a foreign land they went for battle. As O’ Brien (82) utters “… It’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true… Sometimes war is beautiful, sometimes it’s horrible…” there appears to be pain and happiness in war.

Though this theme may seem confusing, it takes the reader into the inner revelation of how the soldiers were undergoing a blend of experiences in which some made them happy while others saddened them. As a result, most of the unfolding in this novel ends up engaging the reader into active listening scenarios, which facilitate a deeper understanding of the underlying issues.

As it is noted, O’Brien takes the readers through a story of his current self, which seems more a story than real experience. His frequent questioning of the definition of a “true story” and what truth implies in any story engages the reader into active sessions of listening to his utterances. At the same time, the author engages the reader into a description of the numerous deaths of his champions in a repetition manner.

For instance, O’Brien (129) describes the shape of the dead man’s eye more than five times in the previous chapters. A vivid account of the author’s remarks on various events through his repetition tendency to engage the reader into the active unfolding of his intentions to write the novel emerges as a film like presentation since it requires the close attention of his utterances. By so doing, O’Brien succeeds in engaging his audience into active sessions through his blend of literary devices to present various ideas.

Also, O’Brien seems to exaggerate in his vivid accounts of the experience the soldiers in the war. Through describing the war in various dimensions, the author leaves the readers feeling burdened with hardships and turmoil that his soldiers were undergoing, though some doubt about its actual existence remains an imminent issue to his audience.

As O’Brien (75) reveals, “…and the whole war is right there in that stare. It says everything you can’t ever say…” the warfare situation seems harsh and unbearable among the soldiers, since some end up being killed with others brutalized in various ways. Notably, the act of listening in most of the author’s utterances seems quite crucial in the sense that it provides the reader with a vivid account of the happenings presented in this novel.

While describing the tangibles, O’Brien describes the entire scenario of how each character was armed with a variety of objects as they set for the war. It is the force and the weight of the flamboyant explanation of the setting to the war by the soldiers that engage the reader into more active participation in the entire scene.

For instance, “…every third or fourth person carried a Claymore antipersonnel mine – 3.5 pounds with its firing device…they carried fragmentation of grenades – 14 ounces each…they all carried at least one M-18 colored smoke grenade – 24 ounces…” (O’Brien 7).

Quite significantly, the use of repetition in this extract seems to engross the reader into a more precise account of the actual setting of the soldiers into the war. This leaves the reader into active listening of the utterances of the author as he tries to bring into attention how much the soldiers were prepared for the war.

This essay analyzes Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” This collection of short stories is devoted to a platoon of American soldiers who fight in the Vietnam War. In summary, the act of listening in this book is quite crucial in the sense that it provides the reader with a more profound revelation of the utterances presented by O’Brien. More so, close following of the stories told by the author through the act of listening unveils the real nature of the scenes despite seeming like a blend of fiction and reality. On this basis, therefore, O’Brien succeeds in facilitating activeness among his audience through his use of language and various rhetorical devices to present his ideas uniquely.

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

Further Study: FAQ

📌 how to shart the things they carried essay, 📌 what does tim o’brien carry in the things they carried, 📌 what are the key literary devices in the things they carried, 📌 who was the things they carried publisher.

• Henrick Ibsen’s A Doll’s House
• A Summary of "What The Dog Saw"
• “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
• "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien: Novel Analysis
• Topics in the “Fly Girls” Book by Ken O’Brien
• A Streetcar Named Desire
• Journal entry on Cathedral by Raymond Carver
• Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility
• “Picture This” the Novel by Joseph Heller
• Fairy Tale Traits in The Great Gatsby
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, October 12). O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”: Literary Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/literary-analysis-of-the-things-they-carried/

"O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”: Literary Analysis." IvyPanda , 12 Oct. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/literary-analysis-of-the-things-they-carried/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”: Literary Analysis'. 12 October.

IvyPanda . 2018. "O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”: Literary Analysis." October 12, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/literary-analysis-of-the-things-they-carried/.

1. IvyPanda . "O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”: Literary Analysis." October 12, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/literary-analysis-of-the-things-they-carried/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”: Literary Analysis." October 12, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/literary-analysis-of-the-things-they-carried/.

• Ask LitCharts AI
• Discussion Question Generator
• Essay Prompt Generator
• Quiz Question Generator

• Literature Guides
• Poetry Guides
• Shakespeare Translations
• Literary Terms

The Things They Carried

Tim o’brien.

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

Mortality and Death

The threat, even expectation, of death hangs over all of the soldiers in The Things They Carried . Even before he reaches Vietnam, Tim O'Brien (both the author of the collection and the frequent first person narrator) meditates on the inevitability of his death after he is drafted in "On The Rainy River," and considers dodging the draft and fleeing to Canada. The collection is haunted by the deaths of O'Brien's comrades—Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon…

Social Obligation

In The Things They Carried , O'Brien often focuses on how the men in his stories, even if they volunteered to fight, joined the army because of the unspoken pressure to fulfill their obligations as citizens and soldiers. These social obligations range from that of wider society (government, city/town) and narrows to the nuclear (family, friends, personal reflection). After being drafted in "On the Rainy River," Tim O'Brien runs from his hometown and ends up…

Within the stories in The Things They Carried the characters tell many stories to each other, and the question always asked of the storyteller is "What's the moral?" In "How to Tell a True War Story," Mitchell Sanders tells O'Brien about a company who has to lie dormant and watchful in the pitch-blackness over a village. They begin to have auditory hallucinations: champagne glasses clinking, music playing, a full chamber orchestra. They aren't supposed to…

Storytelling and Memory

Storytelling in The Things They Carried operates on multiple levels: at the level of the book itself, the stories within stories, and the reflections on the value of these stories both in the context of the war and then post-war. "The Lives of the Dead" speaks to O'Brien's belief that stories have the power to give an entire life to those who have passed on. He refers to his childhood love Linda who passed away…

Shame and Guilt

Shame and guilt are constant and often inextricable themes in The Things They Carried . Soldiers felt obligated to go to war for fear of embarrassing themselves, their families, and their towns if they fled. This embarrassment is bolstered by the guilt of not being "masculine" enough—not being brave, heroic, and patriotic enough. O'Brien reflects on how he thought he had a secret reserve of bravery and heroism stored away, waiting for the moment when…

• Quizzes, saving guides, requests, plus so much more.