A review by perenian
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This is not a book that glorifies war.

Tim O’Brien has been hailed as the literary voice of the Vietnam War, and after reading his novel, it’s obvious why. Each of these short stories are about young men and boys “carrying the sky”––the weight of the brutality they witness as soldiers caught in the war––and O’Brien writes with the hand of someone who used to be one of those men. War is romanticized so much in literature (the kind of literature that I refuse to touch with a ten-foot pole) that O’Brien’s semi-biographical frankness is refreshing and sobering. Unsurprisingly, I cried.

Every character of the book carries burdens—some physical, some psychological, some emotional, but all of them weigh the characters down. These burdens continue to define them long after the war ends, when they try to come to terms with their experiences. Survivor’s guilt plays a large role here, and we see all of the characters bogged down by their grief and hurts.
We see how bearing the burden alone breaks Norman Bowker down to the point where he feels hopeless and lost and so tired of it all. He hangs himself despite having survived the war, and isn’t that death ironic?

One final thing that I found interesting: the fighting—or, rather, the lack of it. War is never proffered to their platoon, but they see its aftermath. The aftermath just might be the thing that makes war real to them, a physical reminder of the horrors that preceded. War leaves wounds, and some wounds do not heal.
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