“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” (O’Brien 123). Tim O’Brien, a Vietnam War veteran and contemporary American novelist, in his well-known novel The Things They Carried tells many short stories of him and his crew during the Vietnam War. This novel is structured with a dark and leery tone that discusses the internal and physical obstacles O’Brien and his men face during this war within many small tales. This novel’s repetition, symbolism, and figurative language can be explained by a further understanding of the Vietnam War itself, what the men thought of it at the time, and by seeing what people thought of the war looking back at it now.

The Vietnam War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States (A&E TV Networks). Many won’t ever forget the war that took the lives of over 50,000 Americans and $165 billion. Most people would say the Vietnam War was the biggest waste of money and that there was no need for the United States to get involved. The failure in Vietnam not only questioned the U.S. superiority as the world defender of freedom and justice but also impacted greatly on its domestic affairs (Gillespie, 2000).

Without knowing the emotions of all towards the war, one wouldn’t get the full meaning of O’Brien’s repetition. Throughout the course of the book he uses the word “carry” over and over again. Without understanding the true meaning of Vietnam to the U.S and their soldiers you wouldn’t get the full representation of it. The way that the book is written, you would believe that these men are just carrying physical objects. Which according to O’Brien they are, these men are carrying lots of things with them along the way. Some for safety and protection, others are specific to each men, their values and who they are. But by having prior knowledge on the Vietnam War itself and how awful everyone thought it was, you would understand that these men are carrying a lot more than just physical objects. These men are carrying misery, agony, pain, and suffering with them everyday during this war. None of these men were happy to be here, they knew just as much as the next person did that the U.S should not have gotten involved and that they were just losing more and more bodies and money at the time. So by understanding the Vietnam War and people’s reaction to it, you can better understand how O’Brien’s repetition plays a key role in the novel. 

Symbolism is something that already plays a significant role in O’Brien’s writing, but can be understood in a more efficient manner with the proper background knowledge of the time period and event that took place. Through the use of symbolism it can be noted that everything these men carry with them is a coping mechanism for the things they had to leave behind to come fight in the war. When it’s stated that "The truth," Norman Bowker would've said, "is I let the guy go." (O’Brien,127). These soldiers all feel guilty in one way or another, for following orders instead of trusting the Vietnamese, for their own stupidity, or for their own awful and disrespectful habits. Jimmy Cross and Norman Bowker both show that the blame is universal. The unavoidable death of American decency in war is everybody's fault, in one way or another. It can be noted that some of these men started to go insane during this war. Many of them were drafted and didn’t voluntarily choose to be involved. Each day seemed to get worse and worse and nobody knew what to do. So many of these men would find ways to distract themselves from what the reality of their lives were in order to get through these hard times and remind them of the greater things that await them upon their arrival home. Without understanding how miserable this war really was you would think some of these men were just being sensitive, but in reality these things that these men did stay sane, were the only reason why a lot of them were still there and in somewhat of a decent mental mindset.

Another way that knowing the Vietnam War and its history helps the reader better understand the context of the reading is through the use of figurative language. O’Brien uses metaphors to describe some of the many tragedies that were incurred while at war. When uses a metaphor and he says: "They carried the land itself" (O'Brien 14) it can be noted that these men literally did carry the land itself. They carried everything on the land and everything else on itself, these men had such a hard job that one couldn’t even begin to describe. They carried each other everyday and kept themselves carried during this time. There is so much more than the physical items that these men carried with them everyday. They felt mad, the felt guilt, and they felt agony. When O’Brien says: “He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war.” (O’Brien, 336). Through the use of this simile you can you clearly see how this war makes these men lose their saneness. This man got distracted by the slimmest thought of happiness back home and the result had gotten another one of his men killed. This shows how even trying to imagine that you're away from reality for even a second, can come around and bite you in the butt. They have to have their guard up all the time and face the consequences if they don’t. They have to live with the fact that they just let someone else die and that it was their fault. This is a prime example on how the war kills and deteriorates you along the way.

Through the many short stories that O’Brien tells, one would definitely say you reach a deeper meaning within the text if you do know the prior history on the war and what people thought of it. This novel’s repetition, symbolism, and figurative language can be explained by a further understanding of the Vietnam War itself, what the men thought of it at the time, and by seeing what people thought of the war looking back at it now. Vietnam was hell for everyone and caused misery, pain, and suffering to so many during the time. O’Brien’s novel is just some of the many short stories of things these men faced during such a hard time in their lives. He is quite optimistic when he describes the war because he talks about it in such a nonchalant kind of way, but when you look back and do your own research on this war,  or even ask someone who was around during this war, you can easily find out that many people from the U.S were not happy with our involvement in this war and overall found it to be a waste in all of our money, and an unnecessary loss of so many great Americans.
