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Liked It2 of 2 members found this review helpful “Outstanding attempt to portray the experience of an infantry soldier draftee in the Vietnam War. Although it is a memoir, it is so carefully crafted in its sequencing of vignettes and selection of archetypical examples, it comes across as a fictional narrative. Nevertheless, it is compelling,...” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“O'Brien's memoir makes a stunning companion to his brilliant Vietnam-war novel, "The Things They Carried." Anguished, gritty, and surprisingly lyrical.”
Darra W wrote this review 8 days ago. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Interesting and very short biography of O'Brien's experience while serving as a soldier in Vietnam. O'Brien is a exceptional writer.”
Lisabeth F. Deans wrote this review Tuesday, January 22, 2013. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“A great book by a great author. O'Brien came back from his tour in Vietnam as an infantry soldier with about 30 hand written pages. Over the next couple of years he wrote this personal and gritty memoir.”
Tim Mather wrote this review Monday, January 21, 2013. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“ if you like books that put you in the shoes of people then your going to love this . this is a really good book because it talks about the things that they dont talk about in war books. although this is a very good book recomended for 15+ because of content and profanity”
zach wrote this review Friday, September 28, 2012. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“A rather enjoyable memoir of the Vietnam War. However, O'Brien did contemplate on courage a little excessively.”
Andrea T wrote this review Tuesday, June 12, 2012. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“Lexile: 830”
Mrs. Hunt wrote this review Thursday, March 22, 2012. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Michael E said: 4 stars
Play Book Tag Shelf wrote this review Sunday, February 19, 2012. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Outstanding attempt to portray the experience of an infantry soldier draftee in the Vietnam War. Although it is a memoir, it is so carefully crafted in its sequencing of vignettes and selection of archetypical examples, it comes across as a fictional narrative. Nevertheless, it is compelling, simultaneously tragic and beautiful. It feels honest about the numbness and ambivalence of most soldiers fighting an unwinnable war, one in which the enemy was rarely seen and blended in so well with the civilian population. O’Brien shows great talent in alternating between examining his own personal feelings and modes of survival with coverage of the actions of others in which he refrains from guiding the reader what to feel or how to judge them.
There is no sense of aggrandizing O’Brien’s role as a soldier. As others die or are wounded, he knows he is not brave, just lucky. As a college educated soldier, he is different from most of his platoon, perhaps accounting for some of his sense of isolation and inability to make close friendships (no “Band of Brothers” mentality here). As a consequence, there is a sense of distancing from the events described. In its place we get a special condensed reflection on the cruelties of war, the contrasts between wise and stupid leaders, and what it takes to survive intense terrors in the face of snipers, mortar attacks, and minefields. Before he shipped out from training, he made detailed plans for deserting to Canada or Sweden and during his tour of duty often wondered whether scrapping that plan was an indication of bravery or cowardice. I appreciated his thoughts on the meaning of courage:
“Courage, according to Plato, is one of the four parts of virtue. It is there with temperance, justice, and wisdom. … Men must know what they do is courageous, they must know it is right, and that kind of knowledge is wisdom and nothing else. Which is why I know few brave men. Either they are stupid and they do not know what is right. Or they know what is right and cannot bring themselves to do it. Or they know what is right and do it, but do not feel and understand the fear that must be overcome. It takes a special man.
Courage is more than the charge.
More than dying or suffering the loss of a love in silence or being gallant.
It is temperament and, more, wisdom.””2 of 2 members found this review helpful“Outstanding attempt to portray the experience of an infantry soldier draftee in the Vietnam War. Although it is a memoir, it is so carefully crafted in its sequencing of vignettes and selection of archetypical examples, it comes across as a fictional narrative. Nevertheless, it is compelling, simultaneously tragic and beautiful. It feels honest about the numbness and ambivalence of most soldiers fighting an unwinnable war, one in which the enemy was rarely seen and blended in so well with the civilian population. O’Brien shows great talent in alternating between examining his own personal feelings and modes of survival with coverage of the actions of others in which he refrains from guiding the reader what to feel or how to judge them.
Michael E wrote this review Saturday, February 18, 2012. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
There is no sense of aggrandizing O’Brien’s role as a soldier. As others die or are wounded, he knows he is not brave, just lucky. As a college educated soldier, he is different from most of his platoon, perhaps accounting for some of his sense of isolation and inability to make close friendships (no “Band of Brothers” mentality here). As a consequence, there is a sense of distancing from the events described. In its place we get a special condensed reflection on the cruelties of war, the contrasts between wise and stupid leaders, and what it takes to survive intense terrors in the face of snipers, mortar attacks, and minefields. Before he shipped out from training, he made detailed plans for deserting to Canada or Sweden and during his tour of duty often wondered whether scrapping that plan was an indication of bravery or cowardice. I appreciated his thoughts on the meaning of courage:
“Courage, according to Plato, is one of the four parts of virtue. It is there with temperance, justice, and wisdom. … Men must know what they do is courageous, they must know it is right, and that kind of knowledge is wisdom and nothing else. Which is why I know few brave men. Either they are stupid and they do not know what is right. Or they know what is right and cannot bring themselves to do it. Or they know what is right and do it, but do not feel and understand the fear that must be overcome. It takes a special man.
Courage is more than the charge.
More than dying or suffering the loss of a love in silence or being gallant.
It is temperament and, more, wisdom.””
“A book about the author's tour of 1 year in Vietnam. This book lets you see the war through the eyes of a young man who is thrown into the hell that was Vietnam. An army that is not really able to cope with the guerilla warfare carried out by the Viet Cong. Whilst not excusable, I can see how some of the attrocities that occured in Vietnam happened. These young men were dropped in the middle of nowhere and expected to fight an enemy they couldn't find. Along the way they had to deal with mines and boobytraps that killed and maimed so many. Is it any wonder that some of these men snapped? ”
Karen P wrote this review Sunday, August 14, 2011. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
1 of 1 members found this review helpful“For me, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is the most powerful book that I have every read and it's the standard against which I judge all things O'Brien. In The Things They Carried, O'Brien plays with nonlinear and fragmented narrative structure, magical realism, and the power of storytelling to capture the visceral truth that telling the real story can't quite capture. For O'Brien, we must sometimes turn to fiction to capture what is "emotionally true" and, in doing so, be less concerned with an objective reality. In a way, If I Die in a Combat Zone makes this point for him. Written 15 years before Things, If I Die is a memoir of Tim O'Brien's experience in the Vietnam War. There is no metafiction razzle-dazzle, but rather a straight-forward, linear narrative that begins when O'Brien is drafted and ends as he boards the Freedom Bird headed toward home. It's powerful stuff, but not nearly as powerful as his fiction work. Despite that, anything by Tim O'Brien is better than almost anything else out there--fiction or non-fiction.
Amanda B wrote this review Friday, May 20, 2011. ( reply | view 1 replies | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Having grown up in the post-World War II glow of American military might, O'Brien grew up in the ask-no-questions patriotic culture of the Midwest. Real men were expected to fight. Real men were supposed to look forward to war. Real men craved the opportunity to serve their country and protect their families. O'Brien doesn't reject these values, but these views are complicated by his natural philosophical inclinations. He questions the nature of bravery, as well as how American intervention in Vietnam is protecting the average American's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the aftermath, he's left with no certain answers: "Now, war ended, all I am left with are simple, unprofound scraps of truth. Men die. Fear hurts and humiliates. It is hard to be brave. It is hard to know what bravery is. Dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry . . . Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme? . . . Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories."
And that's what O'Brien does in the novel--he tells war stories. He tells of the tedious days of repetition, punctuated by brief bursts of action; he tells of military incompetence and the frustration of not knowing who the enemy is in a land where farmers by day picked up guns at night; he tells of how cruel being sent on R&R was, knowing the brief return to normality would not last. And he does all of this without being preachy; he simply shows us what life was like for the average soldier and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. His language is at once poetic and precise, getting to the heart of all things. No one can capture the peculiar mix of fear, adrenaline fed excitement, and remorse of a soldier's most introspective moments like O'Brien.
At one point, O'Brien ruminates on Ernest Hemingway's fascination with war: "Some say Ernest Hemingway was obsessed by the need to show bravery in battle. It started, they say, somewhere in World War I and ended when he passed his final test in Idaho. If the man was obsessed with the notion of courage, that was a fault. But, reading Hemingway's war journalism and his war stories, you get the sense that he was simply concerned about bravery, hence about cowardice, and that seems a virtue, a sublime and profound concern that few men have." It's a concern that permeates all of O'Brien's work and his treatment of it is indeed sublime.”
