The Things They Carried Character Analysis

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The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’brien is a novel, which depicts the Vietnamese war, specifically experiences of the soldiers during and after the war. Youth is portrayed in the novel as a significant factor, which influences not only the idea represented in the novel but also the author himself. Although this is no explicitly stated throughout the book, there are a couple of characters that are more significant to Tim O’brien than others. These characters are Linda and Kathleen. By analyzing the book we can observe that both character are connected to O’brien and his stories. They not only represent the youth of the present, but also change the author’s perspective on war. Since he is an adult, we can straight away notice the symbolism of the author and the youth. By changing his views about the war through observance of youth the author demonstrates the extent of power youth can have. Despite the fact that "Kathleen…show more content…
The reason is that as she is a child, he wants to protect her from the bitter truth of the real world. He wants to protect her innocence and keep it the way it is, however at the same time he also wants her to mature and know everything about her father’s past. This can be interpreted by the following quote, “Someday, I hope, she'll ask again. But here I want to pretend she's a grown-up. I want to tell her exactly what happened, or what I remember happening, and then I want to say to her that as a little girl she was absolutely right. This is why I keep writing war stories.” He pretends that she is already a grown up and this makes him continue telling the stories to her. However, realizing that she is actually not, keeps him from telling the whole
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