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The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien

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Jan 17, 2017 Jenny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

But this too is true: stories can save us. I’m forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed, and an old man sprawled beside a pigpen, and several others whose bodies I once lifted and dumped into a truck. They’re all dead. But in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.

-- “The Lives of the Dead” (213)

This was

But this too is true: stories can save us. I’m forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed, and an old man sprawled beside a pigpen, and several others whose bodies I once lifted and dumped into a truck. They’re all dead. But in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.

-- “The Lives of the Dead” (213)

This was a re-read for me and in the many years between the time I first read this mix of novel/ short story collection/memoir back in 1990 and now, I had forgotten what a DAMM BEAUTIFUL WRITER Tim O’Brien is. These stories of war, death, and friendship haunt you after you read them, just as O’Brien is haunted by what he experienced in Vietnam. He tells stories about the men in his military company and stories about his own experiences but one wonders what the truth really is. Are the stories he tells of others actually his? Are his stories actually the stories of others? Does it matter?

The title story from this collection is often anthologized and the long list of things, both physical and metaphorical, that soldiers carry (and then sometimes discard along the way) is heartbreaking. The story that I remember the most strongly from reading this before was the description of one soldier, returned home, driving around his hometown, around and around and around, as night falls. He wants to talk about his experiences but can’t find someone to listen.

There were two stories that hit me harder this time around. One, “On the Rainy River,” is the story of a young “Tim O’Brien” whose number comes up right after he graduates from college. He spends the summer, working in a slaughterhouse and debating whether he should head to war or run away to Canada. One day he simply drives north and ends up staying for a time with an old man living in a cabin near the border. It is up there, working side by side with the old man, that O’Brien makes a final choice.

In the final story of the collection, “The Lives of the Dead,” O’Brien shifts back and forth between his memories of friendship/romance with a young girl, Linda, who died of cancer when he was nine, and his thoughts about how in remembering and writing about his friends who died in the war, he is bringing them to life. You realize that this story captures the point of the whole piece—by telling and retelling these stories, O’Brien is trying to save himself.

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Dec 17, 2009 Jeff Scott rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1001books, short-stories, war, vietnam-war

The most difficult thing about war writing is how to convey the feeling of being there. After reading Slaughterhouse 5, What it is Like to go to War, and The Things They Carried, two using fiction and one using memoir, it seems that they are fumbling with something they cannot convey. Maybe it is impossible to do so without it being lumped into whining or glorifying. It seems to come off as one or the other. Of the three books, O'Brien best captures the feelings of being in a war and more import ...more

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Jan 04, 2016 Kate rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction

I don't think I have ever read a book that had such beautiful language. The stories in this book are brutal and honest and painful, but the language is so beautiful. It's been a long time since I've read a book more for the author's style than for the story, but this book was definitely one of those. ...more

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Apr 09, 2010 Lindsay rated it it was amazing

Shelves: re-read

I honestly think this is close to a perfect book. O'Brien is a master craftsman, and his reflections on storytelling and truth are as insightful as his meditations on war. ...more

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