Spin

Like all other writings of Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” was also composed of elements like jumping in time, the disorganization and the feeling of randomness, made the entire story slightly disconnected. However, these are again from the memories of O’Brien, I think he is purposely picking the ones that are most meaningful, and impacted him the most. One example would be the character Azar, he killed a puppy that Ted adopted, and furthermore, he made the argument that his youngness and immortality caused him to do such a thing. Interestingly, in a philosophical sense, if one is immature, he would not notice that he is immature, in fact, he would be confused with the question of what did I do that made all others think that I am Immature? I think in this piece “Spin”, the difference of this piece compare to others, was that this piece actually gave the readers more insights of O’Brien’s life; Kathleen, the daughter of O’Brien, was concerned that his father became too obsess with writing stories about war, instead, she suggest that he sould write something else. However, O’Brien did not stop, I think the intention of O’Brien for writing about war story was he wanted people to understand and appreciate how they got here, especially his own daughter, not in a sense that he wanted his daughter to praise him for what he did for her, but in a sense that O’Brien himself is using this way to express his love to his daughter.