Things They CarrriedFriendships Trust A Way to Survive
Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried Friendships, trust – A Way to Survive The Things They Carrried Friendships, Trust – A Way to Survive Tim O’Brien is a thought provoking contemporary writer who combines realism of war zone journalism with surrealism. ... O’Brien’s The Things They Carried was published in 1990 and is one of his most impressive collections of stories about the Vietnam War. The stories are not just stories about the Vietnam War, but are more like stories about the friendships and the trust that the characters formed in the jungles of Vietnam where they spent almost everyday fighting just to stay alive and cope, and the friendships that continued on among these men back in the United States. ... The friendships that the soldiers formed helped them to survive, and helped the men of Alpha Company to cope with the war. ... Another way the men coped was to talk about home and their families, friends and loved ones, to teach each other traditional ceremonies and to play familiar games like checkers and cards and sometimes, if necessary, games they would make up in the jungle. Truth, honor and trust were an extremely important part of a soldier’s friendships. Not liking each other at first, Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk trusted each other with their lives "In late August they made a pact that if one of them should ever get totally fucked up - a wheelchair wound - the other guy would automatically find a way to end it" (65). ... Another example of trust is the trust to make no mistakes. ... He couldn’t allow himself to make any more mistakes and violate the trust of his men. ... He spent hour after hour driving around the lake of this small town thinking about the way he was going to explain everything to his father why he did not get the medal of uncommon valor.