The Things They Carried, by Tim OBrien, is a selection from the book of the same name that uses manipulation of time to create an interesting and personal account of characters that participated in the Vietnam War. The story is told by a third-person narrator and describes the actions and personalities of an American squad of soldiers through a repetitive and iterative use of the description of the articles each individual carried. he Things They Carried uses a different approach to enhance the story. It manipulates the time-frame of the story by mixing the order of the events, altering the speed of events that take place and, most importantly, giving the reader a feel for what the characters experienced by delivering an iterative and repetitive frequency to the details of what they carried with them.
Throughout the story, OBrien describes the soldiers by what they carried with them while in Vietnam. Most of the paragraphs begin with a sentence that describes where or how they carried the objects, but it never states when they carried them. These lengthy descriptions by OBrien use an iterative frequency that the reader understands to mean the soldiers always carried these objects. They are a description of an event that is constantly repeated by the soldiers. It is the soldiers routine to carry the items.
To further enhance the image of routine, OBrien also repeats the frequency of the accounts of what they carried. As mentioned, nearly every paragraph in the story holds a description of these items. There are small hints of the plot within these accounts, but largely they have little to do with the continuation of the plot and more to do with developing character and establishing a rapport with the reader. He repeats the descriptions to the point that the reader begins to wonder if there is any story to be told.
This manipulation of time is the basis behind the bulk of OBriens writing in this piece. Throughout the story, the reader is given an idea of what it is like to be a soldier to participate in the same dreary marching day-in and day-out, to have to haul large amounts of heavy equipment everyday, or to be defined as a person by what personal effects you possessed. By writing at a repetitive and iterative frequency, OBrien allows the reader to experience a job that is best described as routine.
OBrien also alters the order of the events that relate to the plot of the story. The events that comprise the plot of the story deal specifically with the moment when a member of the squad is shot and killed. The ordering of the plot alters the sequence of the events that precede and follow that moment.
The description of the shooting is told in detail near the middle of the piece, but it is told that will happen in the second paragraph of the story. As OBrien describes the things they carried, he casually mentions that one of the soldiers will be shot. He writes, Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April (472). It is our first introduction to the character and we already know what is going to happen to him. It is a prolepsis reference to a future event. It has not happened yet in the frame of the plot, so it is an external flash-forward. It is a distant reference since we have not had a chance to learn anything else about the character and his relation to the other soldiers. There is little amplitude given to the anachronism because OBrien continues to list other objects that the soldiers carried. He writes the next sentence as if he had mentioned Ted Lavender would have an annoying pimple instead of a bullet enter his cheek. OBrien continues to use this technique of flash-forward in the story, referring to Lavenders impending death.
Later in the story, OBrien gives a straight telling of the event of Lavenders death. Much in the same way that Atwood relayed the events that the characters participated in verbatim, OBrien merely lists the events that comprised the hour before Lavender was shot. This was one of the few points in the story where OBrien wrote in scenic time, where the real-time events of the story matched the speed at which OBrien writes. Since he wrote much of the story at a pause, where the events of the story froze while he continued about the things they carried, the reader is somewhat astonished by the speed and insignificance of someone being shot. After a step-by-step procedural of one soldiers exploration of a worm-hole, OBrien writes, Lee Strunk made a funny ghost sound, a kind of moaning, yet very happy, and right then, when Strunk made that high happy moaning sound, when he went Ahhooooo, right then Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing (pg 478-479). It is apparent to the reader that at some point Lavender will be shot, but is still surprising to the reader when it happens because of the extreme change in speed that OBrien creates while shifting from a pause to scenic time.
OBrien uses manipulation of time to establish the character of the lieutenant of the squad, who is debatably the protagonist of the story. He uses several flashbacks to tell about the lieutenants infatuation with a girl he briefly dated. The single date that he was on with this girl is retold in great detail and repeated throughout the story. The reader realizes that the lieutenant is greatly distracted by his fantasies. After Lavenders death, the reader sees how these flashbacks created guilt in the lieutenant, and he changed as a result of the event.
OBrien uses several ellipses in this story to skip around. Whether it is extended space between paragraphs or a solid line dividing the paragraphs, OBrien uses breaks frequently to skip around within the time-frame of the story. It should be noted that he does not automatically go forward in the time scheme of the plot when he makes a break, but he skips both backwards and forwards in relation to the events of the plot.
Interestingly, after Lavenders death, OBrien writes somewhat more in scenic time. He still uses pause to continue with the structure he has established, but more events of the plot unfold after Lavenders death. The purpose might be to establish how time seems to flow quicker after events of significance, like a man being killed. These ideas barely break the surface of how the short story (and the book), The Things They Carried can make for an interesting study of how to manipulate time in fiction.
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