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Things They Carried By Tim Obrien Sparknotes

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For Veterans, war has impacted a majority of their life due to the traumatic events that they encounter, so they are left them with the last decision, which it could be drugs or suicide. In the book, The Things They Carried, Tim Obrien writes several short stories on the Vietnam War. A fictional book based on real events and how he describes the Vietnam War as the most significant event in his life because of the things he and his friends had to face. It studies the nature of young men in a time of war, and what made them do tough decisions in and after the war. The thing that is noticeable at first is how characters go into development, and how they listed the things the men had carried with the profound irony being that is not the physical thing they carried but the nonphysical thing they carried, the emotion, the experience and the guilt they encounter in Vietnam. Although the book is based on Vietnam that happen years ago, veterans who were in Iraq are facing the same similarities on the book that Obrien wrote. …show more content…

Cross wasn’t the guy someone would think as a leader of the war because he kept looking at Martha’s photo (Cross girlfriend) because it gave him a type of hope that everything will be all right. He was young and got drafted to the war, yet it wasn’t his choice to become one or was fitted to be a leader, he was called on random. The Photo of Martha that Cross was looking at distracted him, and eventually got Ted Lavender killed (one of his men). Obrien writes in “The Things They Carried”, “He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war." (42). this gave cross the guilt to live forever and it summarizes that the hope for happiness after the war was dashed by Martha

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