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What Is The Theme Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Often times throughout literature questions are brought to the reader's attention to think about. Within Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried” readers are forced to question how O’Brien captures the “truth” of war. Although composed of different short stories, the book seems to raise similar ideas and themes in each of them.
Within each of his stories the idea of being prideful enough to suppress your true emotions is brought up. The short story, “The Things They Carried” brings up this idea. The story is centered around a group of soldiers walking through the jungles of Vietnam. While walking this group of soldiers witnesses one of their comrades get shot, and killed. Seeing this particularly affects Lieutenant Jimmy Cross who pictures

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