The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien

The Things They Carried
List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $5.50
You Save: $9.45 (63%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $2.33 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Tim O'Brien
Edition: Paperback
Published: 1998-12-29
ISBN: 0767902890
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Broadway

Book Reviews of The Things They Carried

Book Review: The Reason America is Doomed
Summary: 2 Stars

There were a few insightfull stories in this tome. But, this book is written by a real liberal. In his eyes there is no winning. There is only digging one hole to be filled by digging another. Tim O'Brien is a wimp, part of the wussification of America. There is no black or white just ambiguity. This explains why this book is used so much by colleges and universities (liberal educators). In effect this book says "I am so smart that I can't actually kill the man that wants and WILL kill me. I can look though the enemy's eyes and I am the enemy." What a lot of drivel. When America and the rest of the Western World is taken over by Islam his descendents and mine will bow reverently toward Mecca.

Summary of The Things They Carried

"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.

United States Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in A Whole Bunch of Engrossing Fiction
The Memory of Water ImageThe Memory of Water
by Karen White
NAL Trade; Published: 2008-03-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.98
Price in other shops: $14.00
Mudbound ImageMudbound
by Hillary Jordan
Algonquin Books; Published: 2008-03-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.11
Price in other shops: $22.95
The Third Angel: A Novel ImageThe Third Angel: A Novel
by Alice Hoffman
Shaye Areheart Books; Published: 2008-04-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.65
Price in other shops: $25.00
Certain Girls ImageCertain Girls
by Jennifer Weiner
Simon & Schuster Audio; Published: 2008-04-08; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $11.85
Price in other shops: $29.95
The Girl with No Shadow (published in the UK as The Lollipop Shoes) ImageThe Girl with No Shadow (published in the UK as The Lollipop Shoes)
by Joanne Harris
William Morrow; Published: 2008-04-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.48
Price in other shops: $24.95
The Septembers of Shiraz: A Novel (P.S.) ImageThe Septembers of Shiraz: A Novel (P.S.)
by Dalia Sofer
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-05-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.12
Price in other shops: $13.95
Lush Life: A Novel ImageLush Life: A Novel
by Richard Price
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2008-03-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.69
Price in other shops: $26.00
Consequences ImageConsequences
by Penelope Lively
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2008-05-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.96
Price in other shops: $14.00
The Tenderness of Wolves: A Novel ImageThe Tenderness of Wolves: A Novel
by Stef Penney
Simon & Schuster; Published: 2008-03-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.23
Price in other shops: $15.00
The Story of a Marriage: A Novel ImageThe Story of a Marriage: A Novel
by Andrew Sean Greer
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2008-04-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.12
Price in other shops: $22.00
Similar Books and other products
Dispatches ImageDispatches
by Michael Herr
Vintage; Published: 1991-08-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.35
Price in other shops: $12.95
The Crucible (Penguin Classics) ImageThe Crucible (Penguin Classics)
by Arthur Miller
Penguin Classics; Published: 2003-03-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.07
Price in other shops: $12.00
How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines ImageHow to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines
by Thomas C. Foster
Harper Paperbacks; Published: 2003-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.23
Price in other shops: $13.95
In the Lake of the Woods ImageIn the Lake of the Woods
by Tim O'Brien
Mariner Books; Published: 2006-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops: $14.95
Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays) ImageDeath of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
by Arthur Miller
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1998-10-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.22
Price in other shops: $12.00
The Sorrow of War ImageThe Sorrow of War
by Bao Ninh
Riverhead Trade; Published: 1996-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.75
Price in other shops: $14.00
Their Eyes Were Watching God ImageTheir Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston, Dee Ruby
Published: 1991-09-01; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $18.43
Going After Cacciato ImageGoing After Cacciato
by Tim O'Brien
Broadway; Published: 1999-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops: $14.95
If I Die in a Combat Zone : Box Me Up and Ship Me Home ImageIf I Die in a Combat Zone : Box Me Up and Ship Me Home
by Tim O'Brien
Broadway; Published: 1999-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.80
Price in other shops: $13.95
The Things They Carried (Cliffs Notes) ImageThe Things They Carried (Cliffs Notes)
by Jill Colella
Cliffs Notes; Published: 2000-12-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.94
Price in other shops: $4.99
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories