Conflict In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

In “The Things They Carried”, we are presented with a story about a group of military men during the Vietnam War. The story is told by an unnamed narrator, from a third-person subjective (limited omniscient) point of view. While the story goes on to describe what each of the characters carried during their missions in Vietnam. The author focuses mainly on the emotional dilemma of the group’s lieutenant ,Jimmy Cross, and the effect it has on his group. Being that the conflict is an emotional struggle, I categorize the main conflict as an internal conflict. Now for the story’s main idea it really boiled down to the simple aspect that, emotional baggage is heavier then any “tangible” object. The most supportive evidence being that ,through out …show more content…
Right off the bat we are introduced to this problem as the author begins to describing Mr. Cross’s emotions and fantasies of the girl Martha. This fantasy and lack of focus quickly becomes the antagonist of the story as it results in one of his man, Ted Lavender, being shot and kill during one of their missions. As the story progresses we see the protagonist develop a guilt over the death of his soldier and as we come to the conclusion of the story, we get a protagonist who has completely changed his perspective. Stepping fulling into his roll as a lieutenant, we get a passage describing how he gets rid of everything that reminds him of Martha as he realizes that his obligation is not to be loved but to lead. This again brings us back to the main idea being that personal burdens are the heaviest things this men carry. Showing how the protagonist wants to figure out what Martha is feeling for him through these letters that she's sending him, it drives the plot to where distraction becomes the antagonist of the story and eventually takes the protagonist to make a choice and resolve the problem by burning her pictures and