Repetition

While reading The Things They Carried, I was often distracted by the number of times O’Brien repeated ideas. However, I do think that his use of repetition within his novel succeeded in conveying a multitude of different ideas. By repeating ideas such as what the men carried with them and how men died, the repetition conveys that the things they carried were more than just material, they were also emotional and burdening.

For example, on page seventy, O’Brien first recounts how Curt Lemon died. Then, not too much further in the story, O’Brien recounts it again on page eighty-three. Since O’Brien knows that the audience hasn’t forgotten what happened to Curt Lemon, he uses this repletion to convey the impact his death had on the minds of the men. The high frequency of this story and others like it within the novel suggests that even though death was common to the soldiers in Vietnam, the aftermath of death is still as upsetting. This repetition can also be seen with the death of Ted Lavender.

Another message O’Brien conveys through his use of repetition is the soldiers’ need for something to ground them. For instance, on page two, O’Brien writes, “They [letters] were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant.” Then, on page twenty-four he writes, “She signed the letters Love, but it wasn’t love, and all the fine lines and technicalities did not matter.” In this use of repetition, O’Brien conveys that these types of thoughts are on the minds of the soldiers often and give them something to think about while surrounded by war.