Written by Tim O’Brien

Pulitzer Prize Finalist

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Pages: 273
Genre: War, Historical Fiction
Published: 1990-03-28
Original Language: English

"The Things They Carried" is a collection of linked short stories that offers a profound and poignant portrayal of the experiences of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. The narrative is structured around the physical and emotional burdens carried by the soldiers, both tangible and intangible. The book explores themes of war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling, providing a powerful meditation on the enduring impact of war on individuals.

Read from 2025-02-21 to 2025-04-05
Read in English
Rating: 4.5/5
Review: The Things They Carried is a book I would recommend incredibly highly, but also quite cautiously.

I was recommended this book as an answer to the question “I want to learn more about what the Vietnam War was like”, and that’s exactly what I got. Not a description of what it was, but a series of short stories that let me in on how it felt.

The Things They Carried is a collection of short stories, and they are based on experiences the author had being a soldier in the Vietnam War. How much is actually real, and how much is made up is in itself an interesting aspect of the book: a few of the short stories address this directly, in a meta way, how “straight” documentary-style accounts of what happened in Vietnam don’t do justice to what people who were there actually feel about it, and how when you’re in a state of trauma, your real memories of what happened will differ from what actually happened. The stories in this book are based on the memories, garnished with feelings, rather than restricting itself to describing only real events.

A lot of what is in this book is gruesome. The events themselves, of course, descriptions of killing, death, and of suffering. But there is an additional level of horror at how desensitized the soldiers became to all that death, and all those horrors, and how they - for the sake of doing what was asked of them - had to essentially turn themselves into psychopaths.

In addition to the “during the war” stories, there are other stories from before the war, about the reluctance around going to war, and stories from after the war, and how soldiers were almost shunned.

It’s been a long time since a book made me feel as much as this book did. It’s wonderfully written, and, for me, balanced perfectly between being a compelling read, but without feeling exploitative.