OBriens Things They Carried Essay: Experiences and Emotions :: Things They Carried Essays

Experiences and Emotions in The Things They Carried Tim OBriens The Things They Carried is non a novel about the Vietnam War. It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that argon brought about from the war (King 182). OBrien makes several state workforcets about war through these combat-ready characters. He shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressures of war, he makes an effective antiwar statement, and he comments on the reversal of a social deviation into the norm. By skilfully employing the stylistic technique of specific, conscious detail selection and utilizing connotative diction, OBrien exhaustively and convincingly makes each point. The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is 1 of OBriens predominant themes in his novel. By consciously selecting very descriptive enlarge that reveal the drastic change in manner in spite of appearance the men, OBrien creates within the reader an understanding of the effects of war on its participants. One of the soldiers, Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a Thumb. . .The Thumb was shady brown, rubbery to touch. . . It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen(OBrien 13). Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, yet war makes him into a very hard-mannered, randyly costless soldier, carrying about a severed finger as a trophy, dashing of his kill. The transformation shown through Bowler is an excellent indicator of the psychological and emotional change that most of the soldiers undergo. To bring an innocent young man from new to apathetic, from caring to hateful, requires a great force the war provides this force. However, frequently are the changes more drastic. A soldier named Ted Lavender adopted an orphaned puppy. . .Azar strapped it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device(OBrien 39). Azar has become macabre to kill a puppy that someone else has a dopted is horrible. However, the infliction of vehemence has become the norm of behavior for these men the fleeting moment of compassion shown by one man is instantly erased by another, setting tack back within the group. OBrien here shows a hint of sensitivity among the men to set up a startling contrast between the late(prenominal) and the present for these men. The effect produced on the reader by this contrast is one of horror therefore fulfilling OBriens purpose, to convince the reader of wars severely negative effects.