"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien was about the soldiers' life before and after the war. They all came in fresh, "green" and then left with a dirty stain that could never be washed. Some didn't even have a chance to leave. With the Hemingway's style writing, O'Brien gave the reader a shockingly visceral sense of what it felt like to march through a booby trapped jungle, carrying pounds of supplies with the constantly fear of getting shot. Made up by little stories put together, The Things They Carried shows us how war transform the people who were in it, not just physically but also emotionally.
"He was green and incompetent and scared" (190), that what O'Brian said about Jorgenson, a 19 year old too young medic at war who just joined the platoon. Jorgenson was just a kid who probably just got out of high school and gets drafted to this Viet Nam war.
Meeting Ms. Jorgenson, AP at Ramstein HS
Old Jorgenson Hotel
Ban do Viet NamIn his first firefight along the Song Tra Bong River, he was immovable when O'Brien got shot because he was too scared, "...it took the son of a bitch almost ten minutes to work up the nerve to crawl over to me"(190). Knowing this would happen if he joined the military but to actually be in a battle is a totally different thing. He couldn't react when people are shooting at him. But after a while living with war, Jorgenson changed. He had been able to "keep Morty Phillips alive." (197), and when he get ambushed "Booby Jorgenson did not go nuts...he stood up and took aim... his face seemed relaxed, no twitching or screams" (216). A big change had arises, at first he couldn't move when people are shooting at him, now he stood up like a man and shoot back...