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The Things They Carried
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780767902892
ISBN: 0767902890
Label: Broadway
Manufacturer: Broadway
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: December 29, 1998
Publisher: Broadway
Release Date: December 29, 1998
Studio: Broadway
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Editorial Review:
"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to."
A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Things They Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone and the fictional Going After Cacciato, and this sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Whereas Going After Cacciato played with reality, The Things They Carried plays with truth. The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in facts but in the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tims went to a war they didn't believe in; both considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in The Things They Carried speaks another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable. --Alix Wilber
One of the first questions people ask about The Things They Carried is this: Is it a novel, or a collection of short stories? The title page refers to the book simply as "a work of fiction," defying the conscientious reader's need to categorize this masterpiece. It is both: a collection of interrelated short pieces which ultimately reads with the dramatic force and tension of a novel. Yet each one of the twenty-two short pieces is written with such care, emotional content, and prosaic precision that it could stand on its own.The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O'Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the girl who grieves while she dances), and love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have. We hear the voices of the men and build images upon their dialogue. The way they tell stories about others, we hear them telling stories about themselves. With the creative verve of the greatest fiction and the intimacy of a searing autobiography, The Things They Carried is a testament to the men who risked their lives in America's most controversial war. It is also a mirror held up to the frailty of humanity. Ultimately The Things They Carried and its myriad protagonists call to order the courage, determination, and luck we all need to survive.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Good but Disappointing
I quite enjoyed this book but found it to be disappointing (perhaos my expectations were too high) It reads more like a series of good but not particularly memorable magazine articles than a really good 'solid' piece of writing.
Strangely, the section I found most affecting and memorable was nothing directly to do with his Vietnam experiences but was his recollection, at the end of the book, of his first love aged 9.
I found myself wishing I was reading an episodic set of ... Read More
Rating:  - Come and check out this FANTASTIC EVENT for THE THINGS THEY CARRIED
Hey everyone! I just wanted to let you know there is a GREAT event coming up almost a week away in New York City. The American Place Theatre's Festival: Literature to Life is performing a theatrical adaptation of THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim O'Brien on September 20th, 2008. Don't miss out on this wonderful opportunity to see this moving piece of literature come to life. Here's the information and can't wait to see you there!
The American Place Theatre's Fourth Annual Literature to Life ... Read More
Rating: - REVIEW OF THE THINGS THEY CARRIED
This book was received very promptly and in excellent condition - I am very pleased with how quickly I received this - it was needed quickly to use at the start of English class for my daughter. I am very happy!!!
Linda St. Hilaire
Rating: - Thought Provoking, Thoughtful, Emotional
Read this book over 10 years ago for high school. It was one of those that really made you think, put you in the state of mind and emotions of the character. A bit depressing - but within context of being a soldier in a war that you did not want to be in; it was pretty powerful. Best of all, there's no deep political, overly spiritual, or wildly insane interjections that one would see in other war or Vietnam books and movies - and no Oliver Stone-like crap. It is O'Brien's observations of his surroundings, ... Read More
Rating: - This Book is a Touchstone
With nearly 700 reviews already, this book is not a touchstone for me alone. I'm a few years younger than Mr. O'Brien, am also from Minnesota, and participated in the last year of the draft. I remember sitting in a dormroom my freshman year with many other young men watching the draft lottery on TV. Three-hundred-and-sixty-six ping-pong balls bounced in a cage, one ball for every birthday of the year. The order they were removed was the order of the draft. At the ninth ball, someone groaned dejectedly. ... Read More
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