Live Essay

Contrasts between Tim O’Brien Stories

For this paper I will be contrasting two Vietnam stories. Both are written by Tim O’Brien and are entitled The Things They Carried and How to Tell a True War Story. The point I would like to focus on is styles in the way stories are told.

To begin I will start with O’Brien’s story of The Things They Carried in this story the author seems to be more descriptive in items soldiers carries on their persons and what each meant to the person who carried them. One soldier carries letters from a girl he knows that is named Martha while he describes a love the soldier feels for her he also describes that this girl never states her love for him. Throughout this story he gives the weight of every item carried by each soldier. For example the letters Jimmy Cross carries weigh 10 ounces adding to the 15 – 20 pounds each soldier was already required to carry. In the story O’Brien says “To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps.” This seems to give the weight of letters more of a solid or realistic feel. Like you could almost touch them.



The author goes on to describe that most of the extra things the men carried were part of their rank. Some carried specialized weapons or equipment needed to fulfill their jobs. One soldier Henry Dobbins carries a rather large gun because he was a machine gunner. The weapon was described as an M-60 that weighed 23 pounds and then an added 10-15 pounds of extra ammunition. “As a big man, therefore a machine gunner, Henry Dobbins carried the M-60, which weighed 23 pounds unloaded, but was almost always loaded.” If O’Brien had only described the weapon I would have imagined a rather large man in possession of it but O’Brien does describe him as large. My imagination shows me a very large man having to carry approximately 50-60 pounds around for mile every day.

In the second story How to Tell a True War Story, O’Brien describes more of the emotional side of war and what weight that carried on the men. Instead of using actual weight of items he tells what weight the emotions of war having on a human being.




In the beginning of this story he tells a story of how some war stories can be so outrageous they cannot be true and if you believe you should be skeptical. The story is basically of how a six man troop goes up onto a hill and spends a week in utter silence listening for enemy movement. After the week is out the troop had been hearing voices and music while on the hillside. After sometime the men reportedly “loose it” and call in enemy movement. The entire area is destroyed by bombing and soldiers report hearing the music and voices again the very next day after all is quiet. This describes to me the weight of silence in this situation. When the soldiers came down they didn’t speak or seem to hear anyone. Even when confronted with authority. “But the guys don’t say zip. They just look at him for a while, sort of funny like, sort of amazed, and the whole war is right there in their stare.”

In another part of this story O’Brien tells how Curt Lemon was killed when he stepped on a landmine and how that affected his friend Rat Kiley. It describes graphically how Kiley took his frustrations out on a baby buffalo by shooting it several times and then went off to mourn his friend. The animal lives through this and some of the platoon kick and punish the animal. Finally they lower it into a well. I think the author was trying to get the weight of emotion a human can carry and what happens when that load is too great. The human spirit then lashes out to get away from that weight. It also describes a letter that Kiley wrote to his friend’s sister as not a war story but a love story. A letter that was described as a moral of the story of war and how the soldier’s sister just didn’t listen because she never responded to it.



Tim O’Brien does not cite the actual weight of any human emotion in this war story but does help you to feel the weight of emotion by telling two very different war stories.

These two stories contrast in the so many different ways. One story helps you feel the weight placed on a soldier by giving it a number. A number in pounds, items, ranking systems. It makes the reader feel heavy and tired just by the description of things. In the other story the weight placed on the soldiers is told from the emotional side. How experiences and emotions can weigh a person down and add more to their burden. This side I feel is the inner part of war the part you don’t speak of because others may not understand the weight you are trying to describe.

In The Things They Carried O’Brien gives you a clear picture of the man and what he is carrying. With colors, sizes, and ranking of the soldiers you can get a clear picture in your mind on what the load is. This is not true with How to Tell a True War Story. War is described as “Mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” None of these things gives you a clear picture of the weight of war it only give you an idea. Only gives you the hint of the internal weight soldiers carry when they go to war.

Even though these two stories contrast in there descriptions of the weight of what a soldier must carry to engage in war they complement each other. In the story that describes in detail equipment carried it also hints at the emotional side. It does this in telling why some of the soldiers carried what they did. Some of the feelings, beliefs, and emotions are revealed. While they are not described in the detail that the other story used it helps link these two stories together. The other story also brings to light details of the landscape the soldiers are working in and how it affected the men and the weight it placed on them both physically and mentally.

I personally enjoyed both of these stories. It really brought home the weight war can place on a person in so many different ways. Sometimes while reading I actually felt tired or weighed down like I do when I’m working and it’s been a long busy day moving heavy loads. In my minds eye I could see tired soldiers that have been hiking all day in the sun through the jungle weary from the weight of their load. I could also see the emotion in their faces that they were trying to hide from each other and how ugly it could be when composure finally fails because of overload.