The Things They Carried | The Things They Carried

At a glance:

Author: Tim O’Brien
First Published: 1986
Type of Work: Short stories
Time of Work: 1968-1990
Setting: Vietnam and the United States
Principal Characters: Tim O’Brien, Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Dave Jensen, Ted Lavender, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Lee Strunk, Curt Lemon, Azar, Morty Phillips, Kiowa, Bob “Rat” Kiley, Bobby Jorgensen, Martha, Mary Anne Bell, Kathleen
Genres: Psychological fiction
Subjects: 1960’s
Locales: United States

Early in The Things They Carried—Tim O’Brien’s third book about American soldiers in Vietnam, and his fifth overall—early, that is in all the shuffling back and forth between past and present, between Quang Ngai Province in 1968 and the time of the telling in 1990, ten- year-old Kathleen asks her forty-three-year-old father, “Tim O’Brien,” why he continues to write war stories. She wants to know why he is so “obsessed.” The cynical reader—and many American readers are cynical in the aftermath of American involvement in Vietnam—may believe that he or she...

The Things They Carried | The Things They Carried

At a glance:

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