OBriens Things They Carried Essay: Experiences and Emotions :: Things They Carried Essays

Experiences and Emotions in The Things They Carried  Ã‚  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is not a novel about the Vietnam War.   â€Å"It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought about from the war† (King 182).   O'Brien makes several statements about war through these dynamic characters.   He shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressures of war, he makes an effective antiwar statement, and he comments on the reversal of a social deviation into the norm.   By skillfully employing the stylistic technique of specific, conscious detail selection and utilizing connotative diction, O'Brien thoroughly and convincingly makes each point.      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is one of O'Brien's predominant themes in his novel.   By consciously selecting very descriptive details that reveal the drastic change in manner within the men, O'Brien creates within the reader an understanding of the effects of war on its participants.   One of the soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a Thumb. . .The Thumb was dark brown, rubbery to touch. . . It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen"(O'Brien 13).   Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, yet war makes him into a very hard-mannered, emotionally devoid soldier, carrying about a severed finger as a trophy, proud of his kill.   The transformation shown through Bowler is an excellent indicator of the psychological and emotional change that most of the soldiers undergo. To bring an innocent young man from sensitive to apath etic, from caring to hateful, requires a great force; the war provides this force.   However, frequently are the changes more drastic.   A soldier named "Ted Lavender adopted an orphaned puppy. . .Azar strapped it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device"(O'Brien 39).   Azar has become demented; to kill a puppy that someone else has adopted is horrible.   However, the infliction of violence has become the norm of behavior for these men; the fleeting moment of compassion shown by one man is instantly erased by another, setting order back within the group.   O'Brien here shows a hint of sensitivity among the men to set up a startling contrast between the past and the present for these men.   The effect produced on the reader by this contrast is one of horror; therefore fulfilling O'Brien's purpose, to convince the reader of war's severely negative effects.