Summary Of The Novel 'The Things They Carried'

Speaking of Courage The novel The Things They Carried is a compilation of many war stories about the soldiers in the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien writes about his own personal experiences while in Vietnam and includes stories told by his comrades from the war. O’Brien served was overall against the Vietnam War, but once he received his draft notice he was assigned to the Third Platoon as an infantry foot soldier (Estrada, 2013). In his novel, he includes a Native American man named Kiowa, who lost his life in Vietnam. If Tim O’Brien had reacted to the circumstances, Kiowa might have lived to make it back to the United States. Kiowa’s death came at a time of surprise. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross had decided to set camp in a field a few yards from a ville in Vietnam. The people that live in the ville had tried telling the soldiers not to stop there because it was the “Devil Field”, but Jimmy Cross would not listen. If Lieutenant Cross had listened, Kiowa’s life might have been spared. While sleeping in the field, Alpha Company was surprise attacked. Kiowa was hit with shrapnel, and the he sank deep into the “mud” that actually turned out to be feces from the people that lived in the ville. A fellow infantryman, Norman Bowker, tried to pull him back out of the field, but Kiowa was not moving and Bowker could not stand the smell of the field any longer and he left him there. Bowker believes he had a failure of courage because he did not save Kiowa, but …show more content…
Kiowa’s death was only one of a myriad of lives lost in Vietnam and it was not uncommon circumstances to die in. Soldier moral drops after a death like that and it shows them just how easy it is to die in a peaceful time. After Kiowa’s death the platoon loses moral. They see his death as one more man, soldier, and friend gone. Even through all the deaths in Vietnam, the platoons had to keep moving without their lost friends, and keep on