... a girl he loves, who does not love him. The platoon is ordered to go destroy a tunnel system near a village in Than Khe. After the tunnel was cleared, Tom Lavender is shot in the head while returning to the platoon after relieving himself. The central idea of the story is people who neglect their responsibilities often need to experience the results of their failure in order to change. The main character in this story is Lieutenant Jimmy ... They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gra...

• Word Count: 1022
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... done. Jimmy Cross" change in character is just the beginning of The Things They Carried. As the book continues to document what happened to the men O"Brien fought alongside, the reader continues to notice the peculiar way men change when faced with extremes. O"Brien's The Things They Carried probes deeply into the human conscience and presents it in such a way that it stirs the reader. In one chapter O"Brien remembers a man he killed. The only man he killed in Vietnam. The book goes on ... him into something completely different than what he was before the war. Critical Analysis: The Th...

• Word Count: 982
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

... , deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as time changes. (Salman Rushdie) He tells his audience, in The Things They Carried, a compilation of stories in order to help others understand his whole story about Vietnam. All that O'Brien believes and feels about what happened while he was in Vietnam is what he is attempting to illustrate. Then the statistics and facts directly concerning the war are unimportant. O'Brien's foremost ... for the reason that the innocence lost in war can be in a way eclipsed by the girls back home who are overflowing with humanity. So O'Brien feels as if i...

• Word Count: 1540
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

... author. That's how O"Brien wrote his story and one of our class assignments, "The Things They Carried". O"Brien wrote about the life of a group of soldiers over in the Vietnam War and the lifestyle that is led while fighting the war. This story showed that not only did the soldiers have to carry out the equipment, weapons and other goods of necessity to live while being there, but ... countries and defending our freedom. The soldiers in the story didn't just watch out for themselves, but also watched the back and activities that their fellow comrades would feel as well. O"Brien does such...

• Word Count: 939
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

... alone in life is not worth living through. A person's gender or who they are does not change the fact that an experience with war can lead to self-discovery. Anyone can change because they have seen how terrible it is during the adversities of war. The characters in The Things They Carried have to think of what war does to their lives. War will always pass through their mind because it is such a powerful experience. Each character experiences ... a time of loneliness and transformation that leads to their self-discovery. O"Brien makes a decision he does not reward himself for, but ... ...

• Word Count: 1446
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School