The Things They Carried is a collection of short stories by American writer Tim O’Brien. The stories told in the the novel describe how a platoon of men fought in the Vietnam War. Although the stories describe the author’s improvised memories of the Vietnam War, they include female characters that portray a significant part of the novel. Specifically, three females; Martha, Mary and Linda. Martha expresses love and danger; Mary Anne Bell loss of innocence, and Linda memory and death. Despite the fact that the stories revolve mainly around how the Vietnam War changed the lives of the male soldiers fighting in it, female characters represent significant human values and emotions.
The first female character we meet in the novel is Martha, who …show more content…
This story describes the decision of soldier Mark Fossie to bring his girl to the Vietnam War. O’Brien first describes Mary Anne as very nice girl that everyone genuinely likes. ”It was Vietnam, after all, and Mary Anne Bell was an attractive girl. Too wide in the shoulders, maybe, but she had terrific legs, a bubbly personality, a happy smile” (O’Brien 60). Mary Anne is clearly an outsider in Vietnam and does not belong there. But after a long stay, she transforms into a soldier: she studies Vietnamese, communicates with other soldiers and even learns how to handle weapons. Her transformation from a nice girl to an animal-like hunter was O’Brien’s way to exaggerate the change all men went through in Vietnam. O’Brien was able to draw a parallel between how Mary Anne loses her femininity on her arrival in Vietnam, and how soldiers mentally lose their innocence once they arrived in Vietnam. It is also worth noting that Mary Anne is the only female character in the novel who directly participates in the novel’s events. That being said, Mary Anne Bell symbolizes the loss of innocence of all soldiers who go through the horrors of …show more content…
The last story of the novel is about O’Brien’s memories of his first love. While at war, he thinks of his childhood love Linda and how they went on a date to watch a war movie. He was in love with her but later discovered that she had a very bad illness. At the age of nine, Linda died, and O’Brien remembers how he went to the funeral and saw her corpse. O’Brien remembers this as the first experience of death in his life and analyzed it in the context that memory is capable of giving eternal life to people who they onced loved. ”But in a story I can steal her soul. I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging” (O’Brien 152). The dead can be revived in literature and Linda’s death gave O’Brien the push to write stories about the experience of Vietnam. O’Brien, in his heart, had write about Linda in order to bring her back to life. It’s the memory that keeps dead ones alive and practically makes them immortal. In the last story, O’Brien summarizes that all the stories he shares in the book are not about the war, but about the grasp of life through the death of others. Therefore, Linda symbolized death, eternal life and the function of
The first female character we meet in the novel is Martha, who …show more content…
This story describes the decision of soldier Mark Fossie to bring his girl to the Vietnam War. O’Brien first describes Mary Anne as very nice girl that everyone genuinely likes. ”It was Vietnam, after all, and Mary Anne Bell was an attractive girl. Too wide in the shoulders, maybe, but she had terrific legs, a bubbly personality, a happy smile” (O’Brien 60). Mary Anne is clearly an outsider in Vietnam and does not belong there. But after a long stay, she transforms into a soldier: she studies Vietnamese, communicates with other soldiers and even learns how to handle weapons. Her transformation from a nice girl to an animal-like hunter was O’Brien’s way to exaggerate the change all men went through in Vietnam. O’Brien was able to draw a parallel between how Mary Anne loses her femininity on her arrival in Vietnam, and how soldiers mentally lose their innocence once they arrived in Vietnam. It is also worth noting that Mary Anne is the only female character in the novel who directly participates in the novel’s events. That being said, Mary Anne Bell symbolizes the loss of innocence of all soldiers who go through the horrors of …show more content…
The last story of the novel is about O’Brien’s memories of his first love. While at war, he thinks of his childhood love Linda and how they went on a date to watch a war movie. He was in love with her but later discovered that she had a very bad illness. At the age of nine, Linda died, and O’Brien remembers how he went to the funeral and saw her corpse. O’Brien remembers this as the first experience of death in his life and analyzed it in the context that memory is capable of giving eternal life to people who they onced loved. ”But in a story I can steal her soul. I can revive, at least briefly, that which is absolute and unchanging” (O’Brien 152). The dead can be revived in literature and Linda’s death gave O’Brien the push to write stories about the experience of Vietnam. O’Brien, in his heart, had write about Linda in order to bring her back to life. It’s the memory that keeps dead ones alive and practically makes them immortal. In the last story, O’Brien summarizes that all the stories he shares in the book are not about the war, but about the grasp of life through the death of others. Therefore, Linda symbolized death, eternal life and the function of