"The things they carried"
By: Tim O'Brien
Overview:
As part of our war project, we had the privilege to choose any war era we wanted to dive into and learn more about. With my late grandfather in mind, I wanted to read about the Vietnam war in an attempt to know another piece of him. I chose Tim Brien's semi autobiographical work as a way to see inside a soldiers mind. From the first page you are entranced by the deep swelling pain of war and the souls who forever have it embedded in their minds. You follow the life of Tim and his buddies Rat Kiely and Jimmy cross as they march across paddies and sticky hot marshes, each of them on the verge of loosing their minds. Every reader can connect to the overwhelming and painful sorrow each character feels, the deep and raw fear that we sometimes don't know we possess. We see both sides of war: the wacky stories that are spread on base and the not so friendly brotherhood that forms as a sort of distraction, and the pure black night that covers them as they go out on missions, friends dead and the pulling of their own triggers that they wish they could take back. We see both the soldiers and the men they used to be, in the heartbreaking stories of survival, friendship, and the ugly, looming fear that is war. |