Things They Carried

by Tim O'Brien

Things They Carried

by
Tim O'Brien

book data

11725 ratings, 4.22 average rating, 1361 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		44%
4		36%
3		14%
2		3%
1		0%

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published

April 1st 1990 by McClelland & Stewart

binding

Hardcover, 273 pages

isbn

077106828X (isbn13: 9780771068287)

description

"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to."<...more

[close] "They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to."

A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Things They Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone and the fictional Going After Cacciato, and this sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Whereas Going After Cacciato played with reality, The Things They Carried plays with truth. The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in facts but in the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tims went to a war they didn't believe in; both considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in The Things They Carried speaks another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable. --Alix Wilber [close]

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Phil rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

11/03/07

The writing is solid enough, but most of the time it feels like it's on rails..."I am about to use a metaphor...the metaphor is happening RIGHT NOW...this is what the metaphor meant..." There's a whole section where he rationalizes his inclusion of the previous section. Also, the book is billed as "fiction" but it certainly more seems like "Tim O'Brien dips into a relatively shallow well of war stories." One of the reviews in the front matter praises the fact that e...more

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Emily rated it:

(review of isbn 014014773X)

10/12/07

Read in September, 1991

I first bought The Things They Carried at the Bruised Apple, a used bookstore and coffee shop in downtown Peekskill, New York, back in 1991 or so. By the time I graduated from high school a few years later, I'd read it so often that the pages, already brittle, were nearly worn through, entire pages underlined in pencil. Loaned out and lost to a college crush, a dear friend bought me a replacement copy a few years back signed to me by Tim O'Brien himself. This new copy is not quite as loveworn...more

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Qiana rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

07/01/08

bookshelves: books-i-teach, metafiction

Read in July, 2008

What I enjoy most about O'Brien's book is how delightfully difficult it is to classify. War stories? Memoir? Fiction? None of these is accurate or adequate enough. O'Brien steps in and out of the narrative, and his meditations on how stories are told and what power they contain are very moving when set against the realities of the Vietnam War. I can imagine a great conversation between O'Brien's "story-truth" and Morrison's "rememory" (from Beloved).

I never conside...more

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Carter rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

01/15/08

bookshelves: guy-reads, short-story

Read in January, 2008

I read only parts of this collection back in college and it's only now that I'm reading the rest. I've been haunted by the title story ever since I first read it, and it's still powerful today. I think I read somewhere that it's one of the most anthologized short stories of American fiction. Probably. But now that I've read the rest of the book, I've gotta say, there are certainly stronger stories in there. Stories that still you. That make you feel your own breath. Fear. And that make m...more

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Elise rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

10/16/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: please, everyone

The Things They Carried are an effing, ineffable, honest-as-hell, thoughtful, thought-provoking set of Vietnam war stories. Beautiful, bowel tearing, heinous and poignant. O'Brian is an artist. Simple. Complete with instructions, How To Tell A True War Story:

"In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen...The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always ...more

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Becky rated it:

(review of isbn 0002236036)

12/09/07

Read in December, 2007

You know when you experience something and you want everyone that matters to you to feel it, see it, absorb it just as you have? Something as simple as a sunset or wonderful food, and you really need to share that emotion with someone? Well, imagine it's war. It's a place where you are forced to exist - a sight, smell, sound, action that you hate, and you're so afraid, but the whole thing, it's inescapably part of you. This book is hard and beautiful. I kept wondering how O'Brien was going to fi...more

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Beth rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

05/29/07

Read in March, 2006

I just finished reading this book with my 10th grade English students. It is always the class favorite, so I save it for the end of the year. I'm glad I have the occasion to reread it periodically--immersing myself in the details of a soldier's life seems like the least I can do these days.

But the real reason I love this book is because it is, at its heart, about storytelling, about why we tell stories and, in O'Brien's words, how "stories can save us." Parts of this book could...more

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Craig rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

07/16/08

recommends it for: harpoonists

A fictionalized version of O'Brian's time in Vietnam, TTTC is a series of short stories that isn't about killing Charlie or "wondering who the real enemy is" or any of the usual Vietnam cliches, and it's not about the futility or the glory of war. It's about the mundane, it's about walking through a jungle with a huge backpack and your memories. It's about how you tell a true war story-whether it's to your buddies, to those on the homefront, or to yourself. Extremely readable. The ...more

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Meri rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

09/13/07

bookshelves: dark-and-twisted

Tim O'Brien, a Vietnam vet, goes beyond the powerful war memoir by recounting not what happened to him, but what could have happened. Though horrific retellings are a dime a dozen, O'Brien transcends the emotional wreckage to approach universal concepts of truth and justice. If only we could all take the ugly bits of our history and produce something so beautiful.

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Meredith rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

10/27/08

Read in October, 2008

<pre>The Things They Carried is an extraordinary novel by author Tim O'brien. O'brien has also written Going After Cacciato, If I Die in a Combat Zone , and many others. This novel is written as the thoughts of O'brien while he is looking back on the Vietnam War thirty years later. Each story told has a deeper meaning than first seen by the reader and they all have life long lessons that will never be forgotten. This novel contains stories about love, war, death, and many mo...more

The Things They Carried is an extraordinary novel by author Tim O'brien. O'brien has also written  Going After Cacciato, If I Die in a Combat Zone , and many others. This novel is written as the thoughts of O'brien while he is looking back on the Vietnam War thirty years later. Each story told has a deeper meaning than first seen by the reader and they all have life long lessons that will never be forgotten. This novel contains stories about love, war, death, and many more!

 What made this novel interesting that each chapter was a short story but in the end of the book all of the stories in a way connected to each other. I really enjoyed the way that O'brien went back and forth telling stories about his childhood long ago that he would then relate to stories from the war, I thought this was a clever concept. I also enjoyed how O'brien described the war and all the things he wrote about, although it wasn't very detailed it still drew out a good picture in my mind.

 One of the weaknesses was that it was not as detailed as he could have made it to make it much better. Even though it was good, I think a few more descriptive words could have made it even better. Another thing he could have done was make the stories connection more noticeable. While reading the book it was a little confusing when i went from a story about his childhood love to a story about his best friend dying in the war.

 Although parts were confusing, overall it was an average book. This book had a little bit of everything for all types of readers. Because of all the war and violent scens, I would recommend this mostly for boys, but if any girls are really into the whole wara and violence thing, this would definately be a great book for them. Even though I more enjoy the drama type novel, this was still and okay book for me.

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Mel rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

08/08/08

bookshelves: fiction, nonfiction

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried can easily be compared to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. In both text the author is involved in a war—both in the physically and internally. Both authors are forever changed.
Both books are fictionalized tales of survival – O’Brien’s and Vonnegut’s. Both stories carry (no pun intended) a universal truth; the truth is hard to capture, this experience, the experience of war, is on many levels ineffable—un-relatable as a truth. O’B...more

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Sue rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

08/06/08

bookshelves: nonfiction-biographical

From my blog:
War books aren't my thing, as a rule, but this book caught my eye when I was browsing at our local Barnes & Noble before I left for the Philippines. The things that attracted my interest:
-The book is described as literature on the back cover. For a reader like me, this means that it's probably not just a (fictionalized) historical account (which wouldn't interest me, though it probably should).
-This book a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. This isn't a strong selling poin...more From my blog:
War books aren't my thing, as a rule, but this book caught my eye when I was browsing at our local Barnes & Noble before I left for the Philippines. The things that attracted my interest:
-The book is described as literature on the back cover. For a reader like me, this means that it's probably not just a (fictionalized) historical account (which wouldn't interest me, though it probably should).
-This book a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. This isn't a strong selling point by itself because I don't "get" all Pulitzer-Prize books, but it is a fact that gets my attention.

-The notes on the back of the book indicated this story was about the people in the Vietnam war, and the title - The Things They Carried - is provocative.

I wasn't disappointed in my choice. The writing is fluid and carried me along with it; the characters have depth and unexpected (very human) traits and they captured my thoughts; the truths about life, as described by Tim O'Brien, resonated within me and are memorable. Here's a passage from the book:

You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. ..."Is it true?" and if the answer matters, you've got your answer... You'd feel cheated if it never happened... Yet even if it did happen--and maybe it did, anything's possible--even then you know it can't be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth...
And that, to me, was the theme of the whole story. You can't tell a whole truth, because truth is illusive. You can only draw a picture and then extract the truth from it. The truth is in what you can't tell. O'Brien made me feel what it might be like to have been in Vietnam - for a second or two at a time, because the truth just doesn't stay with you. But his stories do stick to you, and they change you.

Can a war story be beautiful? This one was. It will both haunt me and please me for time to come.

If you search Amazon for "things they carried," you'll see that the book has spawned reader's guides from a number of sources - it's that good!

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Bear rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

08/05/08

Oh dear. Another victim of war book. It's time we stop this nonsense; War sucks. No kidding. I read some other readers' comments on this book. "What a marvel, what a great writer." Sorry; many of these folks obviously have never had a bad day in their lives, and are living for the vicarious thrill of what they perceive war to be (and what it is about): something this guy has messianic qualities over. I have to borrow a quote from my troops: YGBSM.
Ok, I'll play. This was an ...more Oh dear. Another victim of war book. It's time we stop this nonsense; War sucks. No kidding. I read some other readers' comments on this book. "What a marvel, what a great writer." Sorry; many of these folks obviously have never had a bad day in their lives, and are living for the vicarious thrill of what they perceive war to be (and what it is about): something this guy has messianic qualities over. I have to borrow a quote from my troops: YGBSM.
Ok, I'll play. This was an "interesting" book. Entirely Fictional. The author plays games that way. This point needs to be hammered in at the first, because, like so many books, it comes across as factual. Details of death are interspersed with opinions and bias. Was he there? Hard to tell; he keeps jumping around, saying "This is a story", then, "This is the truth". War? Dead Bodies? They both smell. I know; I've picked them up too. And the people who are most vehement in opposing war at any cost are, for the most part, we military people. Not the people who won't fight for any cause at any cost... because they allow others to do the dirty work while they claim the (obstensible) moral high ground. It's easy to focus on the nasty little things that humans do to each other. Something to chew on: Why is it acceptable to lose over 45,000 people in automotive accidents EACH YEAR in the United States alone, but it's somehow reprehensible that dedicated soldiers lose their lives at far less rates (Test question: How many U.S. GI's have died in FIVE YEARS of fighting in the middle east? Over 4000. Tragic, but a fact... I sit around the corner from a Gold Star mother who lost her son to an IED... Try to convince her that you know more than she does about war) The Vietnam war cost us just over 58,000 combat deaths; valuable sons and daughters gone in 12 years (do the math). We as a nation lost over 620,000 combat deaths, sons and fathers, in the civil war in less than four years… (do the math again... how many per year?) but many would state we really believe they weren’t as smart as we were, because education makes us somehow better; is that what everyone's point is?
Are soldier deaths needless? Ask another of my co-workers, a boat person, who is thankful that someone from the U.S. stood up to power-hungry gun wielders from another country and kept his family from perishing. He will kick your butt if you say otherwise; he lived it. Ask the Kurds in Iraq if they think we were wrong in taking out Mr. Hussein and stopping his murdering their people. Ask both Sunni and Shia if they are alive today because some U.S. GI’s happened to stop their rumble long enough for them to figure out the whole squabble is pointless. There is no true solution; kind of like the reverend in “War of the Worlds” who held up his cross and died for his convictions; would he have better served mankind by fighting back? I believe God expects us to do our part, not just say "It's God's will, he'll protect us". Feel free to disagree; that's a right I defend every day for you. There is no good answer; the fact is, you can judge everyone all day and never truly DO anything. If you are a “student” (and I used to be one) you can sit on your butt and point fingers at all the evil people around you, or you can actually get involved and be part of the solution. I’m not talking about building wells in countries with a serious case of drought and sitting around afterward feeling riteous; I’m talking putting your life on the line for a cause that might take it away. In case anyone likes to ignore facts, there are a bunch of folks in the world who would like to make us bow to their way of thinking. Here's my message to you: Get on a boat and go over there and try to convert them. Be prepared to have your head removed, because they LIKE doing that. It's acceptable; it's expected. No Dr. Pepper included. If you happen to be "gay", be prepared to be hung and enviscerated. If you are Adulterous or wear a halter top in public, be prepared to be stoned. What part about that have you missed? Who will provide your "Monster energy drink" when they take over your country? Another news flash: it won't happen. Because many of us stand in the way of their aims; and you don't have to thank the GI for it, because they don't want it. They just want to make sure their kids and families don't have to deal with all that. Your life and way of thinking are a sideline benefit thanks to their efforts.
The Vietnam war was a nasty little war. What war isn’t? The fact the French at Dien Bien Phu did their best to invoke colonial requirements on the locals and ended up dead or captured in 1956 (Yes, that’s less than 10 years after WW II) is an indicator. We only get concerned when it affects us. That would be 1962/3. Let’s just say the attitude of the writer and his fellow GI’s was what caused many issues; like “let’s spark up” instead of “let’s help someone”. A LOT of GI’s didn’t do that… and don’t dwell on how the war messed up their little pleasurable lives with Disney et al… Some actually tried to do something worthwhile. And that is what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, since so many choose to ignore those facts. Again, I ask: What war is “nice”? It’s not what you say, it’s what you do, and the current generation is the next “Great” generation. The idea we might be doing something good is abhorrent to the "Don't mess with my life" crowd because of their socialistic ideals and their High-school level hatred of GWB. They conveniently forget what happened to the Soviet Union… Everyone get over it. By the way; since nobody in the "mass media" (what a lame name) will say it because it doesn't sell air time, we have essentially won in Iraq as of this week. Send me a note and I'll reply with a copy of the BBC's report on it. Sweet dreams courtesy of the most recent GI's who gave their lives so nobody kicks your door in. (No issues here!)
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Eccentric Muse rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

10/01/08

Read in October, 2008

recommends it for: those who wish to learn the lessons of the past in order to avoid repeating them

The immensely powerful lessons and themes at the core of each of these seemingly simple, but carefully constructed stories is what takes this collection from 4 into solid 5-star range for me. Each one encloses a fragile heart that beats with emotional truth. Each is tightly focused on a brief moment in time, a key turning point or choice, a scene or relationship, sometimes in just 2 or 3 pages, and without exception each packs an enormous emotional and intellectual wallop.

Case in point: ...more The immensely powerful lessons and themes at the core of each of these seemingly simple, but carefully constructed stories is what takes this collection from 4 into solid 5-star range for me. Each one encloses a fragile heart that beats with emotional truth. Each is tightly focused on a brief moment in time, a key turning point or choice, a scene or relationship, sometimes in just 2 or 3 pages, and without exception each packs an enormous emotional and intellectual wallop.

Case in point: Bowker's circling the lake for hours in "Speaking of Courage," ruminating on the past, the futility of expressing his pain, and then carrying that to its logical extreme. Bowker becomes the archetypical post-Vietnam vet in his isolation and inability to (re-)connect with life and those who love him after returning home. He carries the past with him as an anchor, and it eventually weighs him down. The quiet desperation of his individual struggle is palpable and paints in relief society's failure to nurture and reintegrate the many soldiers who fought in such an unpopular, and unjust, war. It took many platoons of Bowkers for us to realize what we had to do to lessen the pain of future generations of soldiers--starting with being able to hold simultaneously two previously irreconcilable beliefs: that we can be anti-war without being anti-soldier.

The nebulous, shape-shifting middle-ground that O'Brien carves out between real truth and fictional or emotional truth is aided by his 'break through the fourth wall' technique of naming a central character Tim O'Brien, while being explicit that it is not the author. But it is the author--kind of. It is the author as everyman, as the unknown soldier, as a part of our collective unconscious. Blurring the lines between truth and fiction transforms the stories from a memoirist's reminiscences to a morality play that resonates with every reader, not just those who wore/wear a uniform. And this is important, because too often war stories, even the most powerful ones, alienate the average reader by creating a closed society of pain, horror and shared experience that those who have not lived through a war first-hand cannot enter. And if we all can't share the horror and bear the burden equally, then we cannot heal and we cannot learn the lessons of history to avoid repeating them.

There is no such artificial barrier here in this collection of short stories that so evocatively describe the small and large cruelties of war, and the soul-destroying but also life-affirming possibilities inherent in facing random, unexpected death while fighting a war that neither the soldiers nor the general population believed in. O'Brien's explorations of courage and cowardice; camaraderie and cruelty; the friendships created and betrayed during war and after it are accessible to all. Where there is ambiguity of purpose, and lies to create a false justification for killing, there is apathy, depression and psychological damage. Character and integrity, or the lack of it--or in other words, human nature--is revealed.

I've not read anything else O'Brien has written (although I will be adding the rest of his work to my 'to-read' list), and so I may be wrong on this, but it is my sense that this is exactly the kind of writing about Vietnam that let a nation so badly scarred by the conflict begin the process of healing. There is a set of books and movies that escalated that process, and I suspect that this one--published in 1990--was among the most important.

In 2008, as the U.S. fights on in Iraq, these lessons will need to be re-taught and the healing will need to begin ... again.
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Kate rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

08/19/08

I'd give it more stars if I could!

This is a book of essays written about the authors experience in the Vietnam war. I could hardly put the book down and now I'm a little disappointed to have it end so quickly. It is difficult to read, but gives the reader a real window into the life of a soldier.

As horrifying as it was, as war is, my favorite passage was within the essay "How To Tell A True War Story". O'Brien writes about the "beauty" of war. I'm going to include ...more

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booklady rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

07/29/08

bookshelves: 2008, autobiography, historical-fiction, history, war

Read in July, 2008

Technically speaking, The Things They Carried is extremely well-written. O'Brien is a good, tight writer who knows how to weave a story. But even while I admire his style and technique, I am put off by the emptiness and moral vacuum he leaves when his machine guns and grenades finish ripping open your insides. While I wasn't looking for Sunday school platitudes from a book about Vietnam, I was looking for some reason, some sense which he could bring to bear after twenty years of writin...more

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Sarah rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

05/28/08

bookshelves: 1900s-late, award-winning, contemporary-fiction, favorites, nonfiction, short-stories

Read in January, 1998

There are some books that I have loved so much, and for so long, that I no longer know where to even begin describing what part of the text initially inspired such love - The Things They Carried is definitely one of those books.

There is the fact that O'Brien's prose is simultaneously straightforward and heavily inflected with nuanced meaning, and he has equal power to break the heart with a carefully crafted paragraph as well as with a poignant and pointed terse phrase.

There is the fact ...more

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Lenny rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

04/14/08

Read in March, 2008

recommended to Lenny by: Professor Dentz
recommends it for: Young Adults (Fresh mens)

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Javonee rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

02/26/08

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: Anyone

I really enjoyed my time reading The Things They Carried. It was a book that really incites the reader to want to read more. Because the author, Tim O’Brien wrote in such a unique way of not really story baseline but story telling, the reader engages with his writing and is able to actually almost live what it is that he is talking about. In the book, O’Brien writes about his emotional and physical expedition in World War II and how one person can go into war and come out a different person...more

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De'Shawn rated it:

(review of isbn 0767902890)

02/21/08

bookshelves: the-god-s-shelf

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: Anyone who wants to learn

The Things They Carried was a written by Tim O’Brien in the duration of the Vietnam War during the 1960’s, describes the actions and reactions a soldier goes through while there in war. Tim O’Brien describes to the readers what experiences a soldier goes through. He describes his killing of a Vietnamese soldier and what life would’ve brought him if he didn’t kill him, what was life like for his colleagues while they were in war and his reaction to his daughter Kathleen about killing a ...more

Things They Carried

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