In five pages this paper discusses the soldier's baggage they struggled with upon returning home in The Things They Carried novel by Tim O'Brien. Two sources are cited in the bibliography.
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served for his country. As author Tim OBrien recounts the trauma he faces once returning home from war in The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction, the reader
gains a significantly better perspective as to the strain of baggage homeward bound soldiers were compelled to uphold amidst a society that was no longer familiar, no longer theirs.
Bowker has a tough go of it as he attempts at re-establishing himself back into civilian life. Not only is he shell shocked
from the atrocities of war, but he returns home with the understanding that no one can ever relate to what he has endured on the battlefield. "[The town] had
no memory, therefore no guilt...It did not know shit about shit, and did not care to know" (OBrien 143). Acknowledging the baggage that he brought home from the war
was one thing; accepting it as a perpetual way of life was quite another, indeed. Bowker is lost in a world that has since chewed him up and spit
him out, a ceaseless reminder that permeates his every thought he has and every action he makes toward reassembling a relatively normal life.
Bowker has faced tremendous adversity within his life; having addressed his combat circumstances with a combination of strength and courage, he has demonstrated that the human spirit is often much
stronger than the ever-looming alternative to surrender. Inasmuch as Bowker has experienced a combination of physical and emotional issues wherein he has basically overcome the inherent desire to flee,
once he returns home he is faced head on with an entirely different battle for which he is completely unequipped to handle. "They carried all the emotional baggage of