For your response, choose any character (except for the narrator (Tim O’Brien), Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, or Rat Kiley, whom you cannot choose), no matter how major or minor, and discuss how, for that character, the events of the Vietnam War were an “en

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is written as a series of interconnected short stories. O’Brien is desperate for readers to understand the devastating impact of the Vietnam War on those involved, and to help us understand that, he depicts not just one but a series of “worlds” coming to an end.

For your response, choose any character (except for the narrator (Tim O’Brien), Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, or Rat Kiley, whom you cannot choose), no matter how major or minor, and discuss how, for that character, the events of the Vietnam War were an “end of the world.” You should provide enough information on your chosen character to show and make explicit how that character’s world has ended (you should be more specific than “they went to war”).

Then, conduct an analysis of the “end of the world” you’ve presented: What is the significance of the way in which the character’s world has ended? What is being “uncovered” or “revealed” to us by the way in which their world has ended? What is O’Brien trying to show through this specific ending? Is there any symbolism present in that ending? You should include these and any other analysis in your response that you believe is pertinent to a full discussion of the character and ending you chose.