The Things They Carried

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The Things They Carried and the Women Who Weren 't There

Tim O 'Brien 's short story The Things They Carried portrays a group of army buddies in Vietnam . There system of camaraderie , their experiences with death , and destruction provide the reader with a point of view perspective that is both humane and devastating in light of the environment in which the story is told . The purpose of this will be to explore the group dynamic of these young men in O

'Brien 's story and to examine the various depictions of women . In to examine this concept fully two articles will be brought to the forefront of this argument : one pertaining to the psychosocial moratorium of the soldiers and how this `colors ' their views of women , and the dichotomized role of women to these protagonists

The dichotomized role of women in O 'Brien 's story reveals this : the women are as much a reminder of the solder 's former selves , that is to say the selves who existed back in the states , before the war changed them into the characters in O 'Brien 's story , and the women also serve as a burden in which each man reveals his troubles with his wife girlfriend or women in general . Thus , it would seem that in either role as O 'Brien writes , the women of the story are seen in a negative light (Herzog 66

Although the truth of the novel rests in the camaraderie of these young men , their sharing of memories of their women is a bonding issue . The women serve to remind the men of what they want , what they are fighting for : in essence the men are ultimately fighting to get back home , to do their tour of duty and to return to as much normalcy as their changed selves can have after the war . Despite this image of women however , the story is filled with the men 's vernacular as in the passage which reveals , All that crap about how if we had a pussy for president there wouldn 't be no more wars . Pure garbage . You got to get rid of that sexist attitude (O 'Brien . Thus , the word `pussy ' is used in reverence to a woman president , this connotation brings to light how the men behave around each other , and this kind of language albeit truthful to the story , is theless revealing a sexist attitude toward women (Herzog 79 . It is this sexist attitude that initiates the conversations about women in the Alpha group , and it is this same attitude which allows the reader to connate that these men are not really interested in the women in their lives , but more the representation of freedom that these women 's harbor for the men is what spell binds the Alpha troop into keeping their inanimate memorabilia of the women

The group of men with which the story focuses does not entail all of them having...