Brice Lucas- Final Post 1

     The narrator of The Things They Carried is Tim O'Brien. O'Brien is a veteran of the Vietnam War, who shares his traumatic and compelling experiences of his one year in Vietnam. The reader learns a great deal about O'Brien. He speaks about many good and bad aspects of his tour of duty. There is, of course, more bad than good. His awful experiences portray how terrible the Vietnam War really was. O'Brien focuses on himself and his company, relaying very little of his own life's back story prior to the War. He gave us hints into what his life was like when he was young, but never gave us specific details about his daily life before his service.

     At the beginning of the story, he is a scared, timid, fragile man who has no idea where he is or why he is there. He becomes more comfortable in his surroundings throughout the story, as comfortable as one can be in war. He develops a mean streak as a consequence of the devastating situations he encounters, including being shot twice and having to watch many of his friends die.  However, living through such tragedy actually allows him to keep moving through the obstacles he faces by making him seek revenge.

     In the beginning of the story, O'Brien told about how he almost went to Canada to dodge being drafted. O'Brien commented on his feelings as he was driving north toward the border: "A giddy feeling, in a way, except there was a dreamy edge of impossibility to it- like running dead-end maze-no way out-it couldn't come to a conclusion and yet I was doing it anyway because it was all I could think of to do it" (O'Brien 44).  That lead me to think negatively about him and that he was somewhat cowardly. However, as the story develops, and O'Brien details the horrors of war and how he deals with them, I started to understand why he would want to dodge the draft in the first place, and began to respect him for the decisions he made throughout the book.  He becomes a compelling character who I root for and want to succeed and get home safely.