What is the theme in the story "The things they carried" by Tim O'Brien?

Answer 1

Well, there are a number of them, including the allure of war. Here's cliffnotes:


"The Things They Carried,a powerful meditation on the experiences of foot soldiers in Vietnam and after the war, is simultaneously a war autobiography, writer’s memoir, and group of fictional short stories. Subtitled “A Work of Fiction,” O’Brien immediately and deliberately blurs the line between fact and fiction by dedicating the novel to individuals that the reader soon discovers are the novel’s fictional characters. To further complicate the genre blending and blurring between fiction and reality, O’Brien creates a protagonist, a Vietnam veteran, named “Tim O’Brien.” The creation of this fictional persona allows O’Brien to explore his real emotions as though they were fictional creations, and simultaneously challenges us when we dismiss a story as fiction when it could just as easily be true. The originality and innovation of O’Brien’s invented form are what make the novel particularly compelling because its main theme—more so than even the Vietnam War—is the act of storytelling. Storytelling becomes an expression of memory and a catharsis of the past. Many characters in the novel seek resolution of some kind."

Here's what sparknotes says:

"Physical and Emotional Burdens
The “[t]hings” of the title that O’Brien’s characters carry are both literal and figurative. While they all carry heavy physical loads, they also all carry heavy emotional loads, composed of grief, terror, love, and longing. Each man’s physical burden underscores his emotional burden. Henry Dobbins, for example, carries his girlfriend’s pantyhose and, with them, the longing for love and comfort. Similarly, Jimmy Cross carries compasses and maps and, with them, the responsibility for the men in his charge. Faced with the heavy burden of fear, the men also carry the weight of their reputations. Although every member of the Alpha Company experiences fear at some point, showing fear will only reveal vulnerability to both the enemy and sometimes cruel fellow soldiers.

After the war, the psychological burdens the men carry during the war continue to define them. Those who survive carry guilt, grief, and confusion, and many of the stories in the collection are about these survivors’ attempts to come to terms with their experience. In “Love,” for example, Jimmy Cross confides in O’Brien that he has never forgiven himself for Ted Lavender’s death. Norman Bowker’s grief and confusion are so strong that they prompt him to drive aimlessly around his hometown lake in “Speaking of Courage,” to write O’Brien a seventeen-page letter explaining how he never felt right after the war in “Notes,” and to hang himself in a YMCA. While Bowker bears his psychological burdens alone, O’Brien shares the things he carries, his war stories, with us. His collection of stories asks us to help carry the burden of the Vietnam War as part of our collective past.
Fear of Shame as Motivation
O’Brien’s personal experience shows that the fear of being shamed before one’s peers is a powerful motivating factor in war. His story “On the Rainy River” explains his moral quandary after receiving his draft notice—he does not want to fight in a war he believes is unjust, but he does not want to be thought a coward. What keeps O’Brien from fleeing into Canada is not patriotism or dedication to his country’s cause—the traditional motivating factors for fighting in a war—but concern over what his family and community will think of him if he doesn’t fight. This experience is emblematic of the conflict, explored throughout The Things They Carried, between the misguided expectations of a group of people important to a character and that character’s uncertainty regarding a proper course of action.
Fear of shame not only motivates reluctant men to go to Vietnam but also affects soldiers’ relationships with each other once there. Concern about social acceptance, which might seem in the abstract an unimportant preoccupation given the immediacy of death and necessity of group unity during war, leads O’Brien’s characters to engage in absurd or dangerous actions. For example, Curt Lemon decides to have a perfectly good tooth pulled (in “The Dentist”) to ease his shame about having fainted during an earlier encounter with the dentist. The stress of the war, the strangeness of Vietnam, and the youth of the soldiers combine to create psychological dangers that intensify the inherent risks of fighting. Jimmy Cross, who has gone to war only because his friends have, becomes a confused and uncertain leader who endangers the lives of his soldiers. O’Brien uses these characters to show that fear of shame is a misguided but unavoidable motivation for going to war.
The Subjection of Truth to Storytelling
By giving the narrator his own name and naming the rest of his characters after the men he actually fought alongside in the Vietnam War, O’Brien blurs the distinction between fact and fiction. The result is that it is impossible to know whether or not any given event in the stories truly happened to O’Brien. He intentionally heightens this impossibility when his characters contradict themselves several times in the collection of stories, rendering the truth of any statement suspect. O’Brien’s aim in blending fact and fiction is to make the point that objective truth of a war story is less relevant than the act of telling a story. O’Brien is attempting not to write a history of the Vietnam War through his stories but rather to explore the ways that speaking about war experience establishes or fails to establish bonds between a soldier and his audience. The technical facts surrounding any individual event are less important than the overarching, subjective truth of what the war meant to soldiers and how it changed them.
The different storytellers in The Things They Carried—Rat Kiley and Mitchell Sanders especially, in addition to O’Brien—work to lay out war’s ugly truths, which are so profound that they require neither facts nor long explanations. Such statements as “This is true,” which opens “How to Tell a True War Story,” do not establish that the events recounted in the story actually occurred. Rather, they indicate that the stylistic and thematic content of the story is true to the experience that the soldiers had in the war. This truth is often ugly, in contrast to the ideas of glory and heroism associated with war before Vietnam. In O’Brien’s “true” war story, Kiley writes to Lemon’s sister, and when she never responds, he calls her a “dumb cooze,” only adding to the ugliness of the story. O’Brien’s declaration that the truest part of this story is that it contains no moral underscores the idea that the purpose of stories is to relate the truth of experience, not to manufacture false emotions in their audiences."

Answer 2

the biggest character could be somebody that readers can become conscious of with, or relate to. a character in a narrative who's thoroughly perfect is unappealing to readers simply by fact it incredibly is incredibly unrealistic and does not make for a great plot considering that character has no way of convalescing, changing, or gaining information of from blunders. i think of it incredibly is honest for a hero to have 2 factors to their character - a brave, brave, selfless facet, and a vulnerable, vulnerable, human facet. Plot defines a great tale simply by fact it incredibly is the activities and circumstances that the characters pass with the aid of. good plots draw readers into the story and cause them to experience what the characters are feeling, yet in spite of this distinctive human beings look for various features in plot. Characters are additionally incredibly important in a great tale. to respond to your question - on a common point, the guy on the radio is extremely maximum appropriate by utilising asserting that your hero needs to be a moron each so often. It makes the hero extra relatable and real looking; somebody the readers can incredibly relate to and become conscious of with. i'm in common terms slightly curious as to what's the e book sequence in question?

Answer 3

You know, if you're going to troll for free answers that you can copy, you should at least take the time to create an avatar. If you can't figure out the theme of a story whose very title lays out the theme for you, you will most likely be back in this very forum asking more questions so that you can return to staring blankly at the world-- one of the very issues authors of O'Brien's generation took issue with.

Answer 4

I thiink it's that personal burdens and the burden of a country weigh the soldiers down in addition to the actual tangible things they have to lug thru the jungle. Tell me if you think this is right.

Answer 5

Gypsy kisses?

Answer 6

chicken butt :)