As you read the novel, which parts did you connect/relate to best in terms of the struggles, character relationships, or in other ways?
What did you gain from reading this novel? What would you say is the "Big Idea" (or universal lesson) of this novel that will stick with you after reading it? After everyone posts their big ideas, be sure to vote on the best one and we'll have a contest called the BEST BIG IDEA BLOG CONTEST. You will receive a fabulous prize when the 2013 school year commences (think less trophy and more pack of gum to avoid disappointment). Good luck--may the best blogger win!
P.S. Any big ideas from Sparknotes, etc. are disqualified; all big ideas must be the property of your brain.
War is war. No matter the decade, location, or the reason. One cannot go a day without being afraid that it will be their last day. The fear of being shot or blown up, even if you are off duty, you still carry the fear. On the other hand, your fellow soldiers will always have your back; in a way, each soldier belongs to a "Band of Brothers". I guess that is how I connect with the novel, I know my friends have my back, as I have their's. I can connect with Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, because since he had no intention of becoming a team leader of a company, he feels great remorse every time one of his men dies. I hate to let anyone down; the guilt and stress of it all can be unbearable, and I would rather have it that way, as he would, because I would save others the burden of guilt and confusion as Cross suffers for his fellow men.
ReplyDeleteI gained knowledge of History, as well as the fact that everyone carries some sort of emotional burden that relates to others in some way.
The big idea I would say is being able to make sacrifices of your individual ambitions for the needs of others. O'Brien knows it was not a good war, "it was a wrong war" and it did not really make much of a difference in the end. However, The soldiers went out to help South Vietnam fight against North Vietnam, but some of the soldiers I am sure felt that it was not our place to help a civil war that was not even taking place in our country. It was also personal sacrifices that were made during the everyday war scene in order to make the better of decisions in stressful situations, some more than others.
I believe that one can make certain life decisions and sacrifices that can relate to everyone, because we all share personal experiences and understanding.
"The Things They Carried" is relevent today through our war on terror. Today, like the war in Vietnam, many people lose focus on the war. It's a far off concept that no one thinks, or knows anything, about. Before Vietnam, in the World Wars, everyone was involved in the war effort and everyone knew about the battles. Now very few people actually know what countries we're fighting in. People today, like people during Vietnam, know nothing about the war, but still spout the "truth" of the conflict.
ReplyDeleteThe feeling that I most identified with was of O'Brien's reactions to talking with his company during their leave. He felt like an outsider with the people he felt were his friends for the last few months. It's like going on a week vacation, really missing your friends the whole time. Then getting home to see you replace with the girl you hate, and to top it all off the inside jokes have changed.
I think the big idea is that memories are the hardest things to carry. Everyone has bad memories. I sometimes think back on all the embarrassing memories and things I regret, and they just feel like a lead weight. I feel like this is one of those things everyone feels, and the emotional baggage in the book is very striking. There are things O'Brien regrets with his life; not saving Kiowa. The book holds chapters of stories and memories so haunting they've stuck with O'Brien his whole life. For example, the man on the trail, or his memory of Lemon. Memories are heavy baggages to carry, and we all have a life full of them.
War is a catalyst for drastic changes in human beings. It changes the thought patterns, reactions, and sometimes the overall personality of a person. It drives the mind to extremes that any normal, everyday experience could not. In essence, the main idea of The Things They Carried is that war changes people in unreal ways.
ReplyDeleteWar acts through many emotions to change people, but the greatest and most powerful emotion is fear. O’Brien discusses when he is first drafted into the war in the novel. His first instinct is to run to Canada out of pure fear. Though he never makes it, fear engulfs his thoughts. Beginning with a fear of dying, O’Brien is eventually overcome by a new fear; disgrace. He is afraid to shame himself and his family, so in the end he returns to his town and is shipped out to Vietnam. Still, just the thought of war alone drove him to extreme measures that he would not be normally capable of carrying out.
The mind is Play-Doh in war’s hands. Mary Anne Bell fully represents war twisting the human mind into a sick, unruly, beast. She starts as an innocent, young girl from Cleveland fresh out of high school. However, after only one month of being in Vietnam she had turned into a cold, ruthless killing machine. She was addicted to the thrill of the kill, and the need to fill her wants drove her to insanity and eventually, she loses herself. War itself had taken her to be his maiden, versus Mark Fossie taking her to be his wife.
Another example of war driving someone to the highest levels of mental instability is the story of Norman Bowker. Bowker is a veteran of the war, who experiences some truly disgusting events in Vietnam. His main problem is that he cannot tell anyone about these experiences. Repeatedly in his head, he would tell the story of how he almost won the Silver Star and lost his friend Kiowa in the “crud fields” and how much it hurt him. In actuality, he was suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from the war. PTSD led to him to the greatest insanity, causing him to hang himself in a YMCA, with a jump rope. War poisons the mind, and if it is not cleansed or relieved, it can lead to death.
War doesn’t just change those who directly experience it. It affects loved ones as well. It changes their lives forever. I can personally vogue for this. My uncle was MIA (missing in action) in the war. Dog tags were never found, thus his name never put on the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington D.C. I never got the chance to meet him, but the thought crosses my mind frequently; especially while I was reading this novel. Not getting a chance to meet this person has affected my life, in more ways than one.
War is the greatest tragedy in the world; not only for those who die, but those who survive as well. It forever alters lives of once normal people with normal dreams. In conclusion, the main idea of The Things They Carried is that war changes people.
In the novel “The Things They Carried”, the struggles faced by the characters and country are still relevant in today’s society. For example, people still argue about whether or not the United States should be involved in wars today. Also, many citizens, like citizens during Vietnam, are not educated on the war. They do not know what is going overseas and they do not want to know. While reading the novel, I related to the sense of community among the soldiers. I experience this with my team; there is a certain unspoken bond among everyone. Overall, I think the big idea of this novel is the friendship shared among soldiers that runs stronger than any other relationship in their lives.
ReplyDeleteThe novel "The Things They Carried" is still relevant today because events in the book model events that occur today. In the book, O'Brien talks of how divided the country was on Vietnam, and how the country's leaders couldn't agree on anything. That certainly is the case today. The major political parties just point fingers at each other and get nothing done. Another reason the book is still relevant is because many of the ideas it presents in regards to human struggles are timeless. The idea of how our courage fluctuates, and we never really know how much we have. The idea of how important it is to maintain levity, even in the most dire of situations.
ReplyDeleteThe struggle I most relate to is that of Norman Bowker. Not that something traumatic happened to me and I can't talk about it, but the fact that one of the reasons he can't talk is because he doesn't want to become something he hates: another whining veteran, complaining that nothing special happened to him. I can relate to having aspects of my personality that I despise.
The big idea I came away with for this book was that stories can do many things, even keep keep people alive, and they don't have to have happened to be true. For example, O'Brien tells a story of how Rat Kiley tortures a baby buffalo after his best friend Curt dies. O'Brien later reveals this story to have never happened, but it is still true because it shows the true idea of how grief can make us to crazy, terrible things.
The Things They Carried is relevant to today’s fear of the unknown enemy. The thing about the Vietnam War that really messed up most of the soldiers was the constant fear of attack. It wasn’t like a regular war, where there were definite beginnings and endings to an army. There were no “front lines” and there was no place to be completely safe. Even when O’Brien was transferred to Headquarters Company, considered “cushy duty,” they still took fire regularly. Another new experience was the soldiers didn’t always know who to fight. The Vietcong were not a regular army who wore uniforms and flew their banners high. They worked in secret, and you could never be sure if that old man in the rice paddy was planning to ambush you. This relates to America today, and our war on Al Qaeda. We don’t know who is in Al Qaeda; we don’t know their central location, their next plan of attack, nothing. It’s all a constant guessing game, when are they going to attack next? All we can do is stay on our toes and prepare for the worst. Ever since the Twin Towers, all of our focus has gone to fighting this war on terrorism, and it’s similar to Vietnam in the way of the uncertainty of it all.
ReplyDeleteBut as to the “Big Idea” of the book, I would say that in narrow terms, the idea is that war, and by extension war stories, are nothing like what we see in movies. Real war stories do not regale us with acts of heroic courage, do not astound us with the soldiers’ selfless, live-saving actions. Instead, war stories are simply tales of young, scared soldiers doing whatever it takes to stay alive. Their actions are not always brave, the soldiers are not always proud of what they have done, but that is what makes a true war story. In more general terms, one could say the big idea is that things are not always what they seem. Just as war is not a series of courageous acts like we have been led to believe by Hollywood producers, other things in our life may be misconstrued too. For example: in The Things They Carried, at one point, the novel flashes back to the summer O’Brien was drafted to the war. On the outside, he seemed like every other young man of his time, willing to do his duty. But inside, he was constantly facing a bitter struggle, every fiber of his body rebelling against the idea of going to war, but torn because he was afraid to dishonor and embarrass himself. Then one day he just snapped, and made a run for Canada. Nobody in his town expected it, because O’Brien did not seem like the kind of boy to just run away. But as we learned from the novel, things are not always as they seem.
The novel, The Things They Carried, takes place during the Vietnam War. Even though the setting is a few decades in the past, there is still a lot that we can learn from this work and store in our banks of knowledge on things such as politics, war, and the way we live our lives. One detail that really stuck with me was the fact that hardly anyone knew the true nature of the war, O’Brien even says it himself early on the in book, “…but it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost.” (O’Brien, 14). Not only was there blind obedience from the soldiers, but the civilians couldn’t be bothered to learn of the war themselves, “It was a brisk, polite town. It did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know.” (O’Brien, 137) Even though this town is fictitious it speaks an awful lot of truth about the majority of the country’s view on the war. The moral is that we should better be informed about what is going on in the country and not leave the matters affecting us in the hands of others. There should be more collective involvement when it comes to times of political crises and not follow blindly like the soldiers portrayed in the book. If this happened on a large scale, maybe we wouldn’t have to waste our money on wars that have little meaning or effect on us.
ReplyDeleteAs I read the novel, the chapter that I enjoyed/connected with the most was definitely the “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong.” I think that I liked it at first because Mary Anne was a strong unapologetic female who could hold her own, but as I read the book for the second time, I realized that I liked it because it illustrated the fact that men and women are very similar when it comes to coping with tough situations. Like the soldiers in the novel, Mary Anne came to the war not knowing what to expect, and she goes through the phases of curiosity, action, and immersion much like the men do. Mary Anne changed and Mark Fossie felt as if he no longer knew his high school sweetheart, this chapter shows that war changes people in ways that cannot be predicted and no one is safe from its toxic grasp. In more simplified terms, it tells the reader that people change and you cannot control them. Mark tried to ‘save’ Mary Anne from the war by asking her to stop going on raids with the Greenies, and to marry him. The only effect this has is driving Marry Anne away to the point where she is rumored to live wild in Vietnam.
I believe that the “big idea” of this novel is that death is an illusion. As we learned from the chapter “The Lives of the Dead.” The narrator says that he often dreams the dead alive, and he elaborates on how a story can do the same as a dream, “But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.” (O’Brien, 213). I believe that there are two types of death; the death of a body, and the death of a person. A body can be preserved for only a short period of time, but the life of a person can live forever, and Tim O’Brien is a master of perpetuating the lives of his characters. As I finished the novel for the first time this summer, Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, and Kiowa were dead, but as I started it again, they were alive and young and as I read, it was as if there demise had never occurred. And every time the book is picked up, they will be there alive trick or treating in a ghost mask, playing catch with smoke grenades, and carrying the New Testament.
The Things They Carried may have been set in a war thats long since passed but many things about it are useful in understanding war and politics today. War is still something that really takes a toll on the soldiers who fight it just like in Vietnam. People still suffer through inner and outer factors when there, they miss things back home, they deal with the deaths of those around them, second thoughts about what they're doing, etc. This novel showed me even more how war really effects people on a more personal level. I would say the 'big idea' of this novel is to show what the people experiencing it went through and examples of courage and inner struggle with whats right for you and whats expected of you. There was no soul idea or point to get across, just showing what war is dealing with the unimaginable on a daily basis.
ReplyDeleteIn the novel The Things They Carried the men in the Vietnam war face struggles similar to men that are fighting in war today. War struggles in the past are relevant to war struggles in the present in the sense that they are generally the same. Fighting in the war causes men to lose their sane state of mind. In the war they experience things that everyday people could never imagine. They see and live through things that change them emotionally and change the way they look at themselves and the rest of the world. The men lost many friends while on their journey and they had to keep on going knowing that some of their men were gone. Grief played a big part in the novel, from Jimmy Cross grieving over Lavenders death to all the men in general grieving over the deaths of the men that they themselves to the lives of. Grief was a large part of the book that I could relate to. From the novel I took away that the big idea is that sometimes we have to live through things and push through things that we don't want to. Things that hurt us or change us, but we have to do it to benefit a bigger group. AS the men said all along, they weren't sure what they were helping and that at times it seemed like they had done nothing and that they all wanted to give up. Despite the problems they encountered they came together to fight for South Korea. Overall they did help and although they lost many friends and their lives were never the same after the war as before, it was for a good purpose and that's why working as a team even if it isn't for your team is a good thing, which is what I took from reading this novel.
ReplyDeleteWhile I see many overarching themes through-out the story, such as the changes war can cause in a person and the bonds of kinsmenship among soldiers, but the theme I felt was most important, and stood out to me was the futility of war. Your friends die, your comrades die, and, more figuratively, your relationships back home die. All of this sacrifice for a war that, especially in this particular case, was fought for little to no reason. A war of politics, there was not any particular person to stop, but a concept, an idea. It's something impossible to destroy, ideas, and that leads to the pointlessness of it all. At least, that's what I got out of it.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of the setting, struggle is a major topic. War is a physical struggle. Politics is a power struggle. Every life has its own struggles. We can learn from others' mistakes, but some things bring forth the same questions: what are we fighting for, who is the enemy, and, most importantly, is it worth it? There will always be questions about the blurred lines of conflict.
ReplyDeleteAlong with most of humanity, I relate with O'Brien's struggle with embarrassment. No one wants to live with a reputation of a coward. O'Brien heads into war to avoid the embarrassment that comes with running away to Canada. In the war, O'Brien is completely and utterly embarrassed with an injury to the butt anyways. To gain a better reputation, he plans revenge on Jorgenson for the damage he caused, or rather for the damage he didn't fix. When he can't finish his plan, O'Brien gets a kick to the face with even more embarrassment. Easier said than done, not caring about others' opinions is an endless struggle.
In this sense, death isn't the struggle; life is the struggle. Perhaps, this is what victims of suicide believe. Even so, the struggle is the best part. Its the part that is told for generations. Its the part that lives on. Its the part that gives a person a purpose. I believe that the "big idea" here is when one puts aside things like reputation and judgment and focuses on what's important to them, their real reputation will build itself and remove the focus from their life to their purpose. In the last chapter, "The Lives of the Dead," O'Brien proves this by keeping Linda, Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, and Kiowa alive and well. The truth is... we are all fighting for a purpose against the world, because it is worth it.
The big idea of the book is coping with the emotional stresses laid before you from war. More people than I'm willing to find a number for suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. Everything in the book led to one soldiers emotions to the next. Objects they carried literally were like tributaries leading to the figurative meanings behind their possessions. The emotions that are carried along with their prized possessions carry more of a weight than the physical properties of said object. War is in no way, shape or form, a physical struggle at all. When President Truman dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it wasn't any amount of physical strength or endurance that helped him give the order to drop the bomb. You have to think outside of the box. When O'Brien killed the man in the chapter titled, "The Man I Killed," The readers could sense the emotional toll it left on him, O'Brien played they possible life in front of his eyes that the man could have had and did have. You all read the chapter and know what I'm talking about. The point is, imagine being in the presidents situation, O'Brien reacted that way because of one kill. Truman killed hundreds of thousands of people. Think about what went through his head if O'Brien thought that much about one man. In wars physical power is no match to willpower. Most of all the idea is to not lose your humanity. Take "Ender's Game" for example. He committed genocide and above all kept his humanity by saving some in the end. That is the big idea.
ReplyDeleteWar is something that is overlooked by many people. We do not realize the damage that it causes to the people who serve in it, both physical and psychological. In the novel, some of "The Things They Carried" were the awful experiences they went through in Vietnam. Others were memories from back home that helped them cope with their surroundings. One of the characters I can most relate to is Lieutenant Cross. I relate to Cross because I am also extremely hard on myself. Whenever one of Cross' men dies, he takes it very personal and blames it on himself in many cases. I am hard on myself as well because I believe that if you're hard on yourself and demand perfection, you will give everything your very best. I think Cross wanted to give his best and whenever someone died he felt like he disappointed his men and that he was not suited for a leader position. One of the biggest ideas of the story is that some of the things they carried were not physical things, but the memories they had. Every soldier carried memories, whether they were good or bad ones. There is no worse feeling than having a bad memory on your shoulders and you can't stop thinking about it, and that is what these men went through almost every day. It really opened my eyes to how cruel war can be and how hard it is on not only ones body but on their minds.
ReplyDeleteKnowing people who have served in war, I have witnessed first hand the toll it takes on people. Obviously it takes physical damage, but the psychological damage is overwhelming also. The objects they carried weren't just guns, and other weapons, but instead, they were hard memories of their comrades being killed, or what they left behind at home. The main point of the book is that no matter what they carried physically, none of it bothered them, it was what they carried mentally. They had to deal with killing people, and that hurt them worse than dealing with the 20 pound guns on their backs. Lt. Cross is most like myself, due to the fact that no matter what happens, he always feels like it is his fault. I can relate to this as in one of my baseball games. If we lose by one, i feel it is my fault, and that i could've done something to help out the team more.
ReplyDeleteI think that the theme of this book is coping each story that he tells has some sort of major event happens a death, a sudden change, some thing big and then it goes on to tell about how the people respond to that significant event when lavender dies they smoke his pot, when lemon dies they make jokes but his best friend freaks out, when Kiowa dies they search for him, when Linda dies he goes to the funeral, when the medics girlfriend turns into a jungle queen he trys to get her sent back. Its all about the way that people cope with their greatest fear. Death. The authors way of dealing with his internal guilt is by writing about it. he tells the story to thousands of people in order to cope with his friends' death. This is backed up because the only topic the author writes about is war and war stories. It shows that the most significantly messed up things that ever happened to him happened during the short time that he was in Vietnam. And the only way that he can think to cope with it is by telling the stories of the dead and the long dead so that the guilt can be lifted off of his shoulders.
ReplyDeleteI feel that war is and has been the same thing for years. Sure the technology has become more advanced, but it's still a majority of young adults out there. Worrying about their families and loved ones, or just cannot handle the guilt that a normal soldier has to be able to bear! For example with the guilt, Ted Lavender's death. O'Brien was devastated and completely blamed himself for something he had nothing to do with. You can say the same thing for Kiowa and the mortar, war is war. - Riley Heuker -
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this novel, I connected the most with the section about him making a decision about going to war. I feel like many people in our own armed forces struggle with this even if they don’t admit it. Every soldier feels uncertainty at some point whether it’s deciding to enlist, actually what will happen in combat, or after the fact when they return home. From this novel I pulled away with the idea that our memories, feelings, regrets, hopes, and anxieties are only hurtful to us. We cannot push them aside, they are always there. We would like to forget and move on, but it is always going to be there in the back of our mind. Society plays a huge role in our decisions day to day including what we wear, what we eat, and the way we speak. Not just people in war, but everyone has struggles externally and internally and our peers affect our decisions just like O’Brien and his decision to go to war.
ReplyDeleteThe part of this novel that I most relate to was his decision making process. Though the choices that face me for my future are not quite as “life or death” so to speak, they are as life altering as O’Brien’s were. All my life I have wanted to become a doctor, uncertain of which kind. As I approach my junior year of high school, the permanence of my career choice is closing in on me and my mind does not seem to be so set on fulfilling my lifelong dream. As O’Brien was, I seem to be scared of what others will think of me if I choose a career other than the career I have been so set on since elementary school. I believe that a big idea that was prominent this novel is that we should not be so worried about what others think of our choices because it could influence or though process and cause us to do something that may not be the best for us.
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