In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, he deviates from customary war novel structure by disputing the romantic concept of war, using a nonlinear narrative, and focusing on humanizing the American soldiers in order to emphasize the intricacy of war and its effects on the soldiers. O’Brien deviates from the traditional war novel structure by abandoning typical chronology and adopting a nonlinear narrative to emphasize the confusion and complexity of war. The use of a nonlinear narrative is generally applied to imitate human recall and memory system. Tim O’Brien utilizes this narrative technique to display how the main character’s recollection of an event often triggers other memories. The lack of chronological order also affects the
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O’Brien does this to make readers question society’s willingness to send people to die and kill. A common, romantic notion of war is the belief that it is glorious, a honorable way to die, and that it is one’s patriotic duty to serve his or country in battle. O’Brien challenges this belief by avoiding the use of a glorified ‘Hollywood’ effect on the events of his novel. Instead of a major conflict based on overcoming militaristic obstacles, the soldiers instead struggle with the psychological toll of the Vietnam War; the main character grapples with the immediate and long-term effects of the war throughout the novel. According to romanticized beliefs of war, men honorably march off into battle against an evil enemy to protect their country and to prove their worth. In The Things They Carried, the men of the Alpha Company chose to go to war in order to evade embarrassment as highlighted in the first chapter where the narrator explains that “the fear of blushing” is what “brought them into the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor”(20). There was not any hollywood action either; war was “endless marching” and aggressively boring” until the moment that the soldiers would “hear gunfire behind …show more content…
Tim O’Brien focuses on the characters in The Things They Carried as men with their own lives and personalities rather than portraying them as just soldiers trying to accomplish a military objective. In the beginning of the novel, readers are introduced to the characters by name as well as the things they carried. By informing the reader of the exact weight of the soldiers’ gear, clothes, weapons, and food, the author gives the reader a sense of the weight that the soldiers had to hump and endure. By mentioning that the soldiers carried candy, cigarettes, letters, and comics, O’Brien emphasized their humanity. He also lists the intangibles that they carried as the soldiers marched: anxiety, love, distrust regret, reputations, responsibilities, fear, regret, pain, and guilt. As O’Brien explains,” the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible
O’Brien does this to make readers question society’s willingness to send people to die and kill. A common, romantic notion of war is the belief that it is glorious, a honorable way to die, and that it is one’s patriotic duty to serve his or country in battle. O’Brien challenges this belief by avoiding the use of a glorified ‘Hollywood’ effect on the events of his novel. Instead of a major conflict based on overcoming militaristic obstacles, the soldiers instead struggle with the psychological toll of the Vietnam War; the main character grapples with the immediate and long-term effects of the war throughout the novel. According to romanticized beliefs of war, men honorably march off into battle against an evil enemy to protect their country and to prove their worth. In The Things They Carried, the men of the Alpha Company chose to go to war in order to evade embarrassment as highlighted in the first chapter where the narrator explains that “the fear of blushing” is what “brought them into the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor”(20). There was not any hollywood action either; war was “endless marching” and aggressively boring” until the moment that the soldiers would “hear gunfire behind …show more content…
Tim O’Brien focuses on the characters in The Things They Carried as men with their own lives and personalities rather than portraying them as just soldiers trying to accomplish a military objective. In the beginning of the novel, readers are introduced to the characters by name as well as the things they carried. By informing the reader of the exact weight of the soldiers’ gear, clothes, weapons, and food, the author gives the reader a sense of the weight that the soldiers had to hump and endure. By mentioning that the soldiers carried candy, cigarettes, letters, and comics, O’Brien emphasized their humanity. He also lists the intangibles that they carried as the soldiers marched: anxiety, love, distrust regret, reputations, responsibilities, fear, regret, pain, and guilt. As O’Brien explains,” the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible