the things the carried

The Things They Carried By Tim O’Brien. New York Times, 1990 Genre: Fiction

The novel The Thing They Carried was about of platoon of soldiers in Vietnam. The book was a bunch of mini stories that were all connected to the war and after the war. It talks about all the tings that the men carried weather it was a pair of sox to the love of another soldier or women at home. They carried love letters, malaria tablets, 8 pound mine detectors and each other. There really wasn’t a protagonist because each story had their own characters as well as setting. Most of the story took place in Vietnam but some stories were in the homes of the men.
“The Things They Carried is as good as any piece of literature gets….the line between fiction and fact is beautifully, permanently blurred. It is the perfect approach to this sort of material, and O’Brien does it with vast skill and grace….it is controlled and whiled, deep, tough, perceptive and shrewd. I salute the man who wrote it”.
-Asa Baber, Chicago Sun - Times
Tim O’Brien is a well written author. His writing is very simple and very understandable. His wringing is powerful and full of surprises. This book compared to many other books was really easy to read. I could actually understand what I read and it’s easy to get the jist of what he says and how he says the words is very easy to follow and it keeps you interested.
“To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump mean to walk or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the in intransitive”. (2)
I choose this quote because it shows the way the he wrote and how he explains what he takes about so that you understand it. It shows his writing style.
This book was one of my favorite reads. It kept me interested the whole way through and I couldn’t put it down. I like war books that have battles and talk about guns and such it’s one of my hobbies to shoot and be in the woods and going military activities. The author affected me in the way that I only like to read war novels now because he opened them up to me and it let me know that reading good book is fun and entertaining.