Critical Response

Critical Response to “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brian

By: Matt Carroll

 

            This was probably one of my favorite stories so far in the class. The first part I was impressed by was the details of Vietnam and war the author portrayed. This makes sense because O’Brien was a Vietnam War veteran. After reading numerous accounts and biographies on Vietnam and the experiences of veteran from that war O’Brien does a great job capturing the Vietnam War genre. He is descriptive in everything from the C-rations to the type of ammunition the soldiers carry.

            His technique of describing what the soldiers carried also implied what type of characters the men were. For example he explains that the heavier soldier carried the machine gun, the soldiers that were more fearful carried more ammunition, and depending on what type of mission they were on some of the soldiers would drop unnecessary things along the path they were “humping.”

            With his use of repletion through the phrase “he would carry,” or “they carried,” O’Brien took something that usually isn’t appreciated in writing, repetition, and used it to his advantage. Like we discuss in class writing is like a face and when something is missing on that face it’s the first thing we noted. In this case O’Brien added something to his face and it worked for him. I also liked the main storyline about the man who was in love with a woman back home who didn’t love him back. I think with the flashback memories and the character’s agonizing over a woman it really captured the psychology of war. He was more worried about the woman back him getting the lucky charm stone with some other man than he was the Vietcong.

            Overall I thought it was a well told story that showed what it was like in Vietnam. Most people probably are not satisfied with the ending, but I was and it should be noted that he uses the same characters in other writings. In reality “The Things They Carried,” has four more parts to it, so I would suggest for anyone who was interested in the story, but wasn’t satisfied with the ending, should read the other stories.