Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, the author, narrator, and main character, obviously portrays many roles. He writes the novel as a way to endure all of his pain and suffering that he experiences in Vietnam. O’Brien narrates the war from his perspective, expressing many obstacles that he has to overcome, such as: swallowing his integrity to go to war, debating if he should tell his daughter the truth about the war, and lamenting all of his problems that the war caused him. O’Brien does not agree with the war. He says, “I was drafted into a war that I hated…but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons.” (O’Brien 38). He believes that the war is irrelevant. Then, after he is drafted into the war, he begins considering traveling to cross the Canadian border to elude the war. He is in a perpetual, moral battle with himself on if he should do it or not. It is a great representation of how horrid war is that someone is willing to throw his whole life away just to avoid it.

Being that she is too young, O’Brien feels the need to preserve the innocence of his daughter from the abominations of the war. He lies to her and tells her that he has never killed anyone before, and then he writes this story to deal with his guilt. He says, “Someday, I hope, she’ll ask again. But here I want to pretend she’s a grown-up.” (O’Brien 124). This quote expresses how much O’Brien dislikes lying to his daughter, but he knows that she is too young to apprehend; therefore, to deal with his pain, he writes this story where he pretends that she is older so that he can explain to her what actually