The Things They Carried Literary Devices

Definition of Simile

A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition

A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition

A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition

Explanation and Analysis—Boom, Down:

In "The Things They Carried," Kiowa is dazed after witnessing Ted Lavender's death. Unable to process what actually happened, he likens Lavender to an inanimate object falling, and mimics the sound of his body. The story features repeated similes and onomatopoeia in Kiowa's voice, demonstrating his shock.

Throughout the story, the narrator circles around Lavender's death, describing the event again and again with varying levels of detail and from multiple vantage points. One such vantage point is Kiowa's:

Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something—just boom, then down—not like the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle—not like that, Kiowa said, the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down.

In this passage, the narrator quotes Kiowa's description of Lavender's death, in which he uses a couple of similes. First, he says it was "like watching a rock fall," then he says it could've been "a big sandbag." He later adds concrete and cement into the metaphorical mix. Unable to see Lavender as more than a falling, limp mass, Kiowa struggles to grasp what he has just witnessed. Another reason for his dissociation from the reality of the moment is that Lavender's death does not look "like the movies." This negative simile reminds the reader that the soldiers are naïve young men—some of them still teenagers—and that their knowledge of war is informed by movies and other forms of media.

Kiowa also uses onomatopoeia, which he repeats alongside similes when he continues to fixate on Lavender's death. When they dig their holes that night, he keeps explaining "how the poor guy just dropped like so much concrete. Boom-down, he said. Like cement." Later in the story, the narrator quotes Kiowa repeating the same formulations:

Like cement, Kiowa whispered in the dark. I swear to God—boom, down. Not a word.

The simile and onomatopoeia highlight Kiowa's shock and naïveté. These repeated literary elements also introduce the reader to the collection's setting and cast of characters, as well as to O'Brien's style. In The Things They Carried, he tends to slip in and out of different characters' voices and consciousnesses. In addition, he dwells on a given event over many pages—and in some cases returns to the same event much later, in subsequent stories.

Explanation and Analysis—Freedom Birds:

Toward the end of "The Things They Carried," O'Brien introduces the reader to one of the soldiers' shared fantasies: freedom birds. In a long paragraph, which teems with metaphor, simile, imagery, and alliteration, the narrator describes bird-like jets that carry the men away from Vietnam, "beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification and global entanglements." While this fantasy clearly appeals to the soldiers for a number of reasons, it revolves around a core dream: that of being carried rather than carrying.

In the passage, the plane is metaphorically described as a bird:

At night, on guard, staring into the dark, they were carried away by jumbo jets. They felt the rush of takeoff. Gone! they yelled. And then velocity—wings and engines—a smiling stewardess—but it was more than a plane, it was a real bird, a big sleek silver bird with feathers and talons and high screeching. They were flying.

This dream, full of light, movement, and sound, contrasts with its origin point—a soldier standing still in the dark, quiet and alone. The diction and tone seem to take off with the plane. Additionally, the passage also contains several instances of soft alliteration: jumbo jets, smiling stewardess, big sleek silver bird. As the passage continues, the dream becomes increasingly fantastical and the soldiers' relief turns into glee.

They laughed and held on tight, feeling the cold slap of wind and altitude, soaring, thinking It’s over, I’m gone!—they were naked, they were light and free—it was all lightness, bright and fast and buoyant, light as light, a helium buzz in the brain, a giddy bubbling in the lungs as they were taken up over the clouds and the war, beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification and global entanglements.

The alliteration continues here, with a number of words starting with the letters l, b, and f. With a similar effect to the alliteration, O'Brien uses a simile to liken the soldiers' emotional and physical sensations to light and lightness. By placing war, duty, gravity, mortification and global entanglements in a single category with the clouds, he gives these intangible things a physical existence. For the soldiers, the ultimate freedom is escaping duties, obligations, and conflicts by flying up above them.

In the rest of the passage, the narrator describes the soldiers' "restful, unencumbered sensation" as "riding the light waves." Eventually, they find themselves above the United States:

[...] sailing that big silver freedom bird over the mountains and oceans, over America, over the farms and great sleeping cities and cemeteries and highways and the golden arches of McDonald’s, it was flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast, silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly nothing

The visual image of the men sailing the freedom bird above mountains, oceans, farms, sleeping cities, cemeteries, highways, and beyond the sun is one of the most fantastical images of The Things They Carried. It offers a notable contrast to the rest of the story, in which the men trudge along, weighed down by the war and all of the tangible items they have to carry. The narrator emphasizes, however, that it is only "at night" that the men are able "to give themselves over to lightness" and experience the sensation of being "purely borne."

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Explanation and Analysis—Leaky Faucet:

In "Spin," the narrator recounts a series of short anecdotes to describe his multifaceted experiences during the war. It could be "almost" sweet, funny, restful, or monotonous. However, O'Brien emphasizes that boredom could be dangerous. Using a visceral simile and tactile imagery, he describes the sensation of boredom that the soldiers often felt while waiting around:

Even in the deep bush, where you could die any number of ways, the war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist, the kind of boredom that caused stomach disorders. You’d be sitting at the top of a high hill, the flat paddies stretching out below, and the day would be calm and hot and utterly vacant, and you’d feel the boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet, except it wasn’t water, it was a sort of acid, and with each little droplet you’d feel the stuff eating away at important organs.

Comparing boredom to a liquid, O'Brien gives the emotional state a physical quality: it would take over a soldier's body to the extent that they could feel it dripping inside of themselves. As he continues to develop the simile, it becomes increasingly visceral and unsettling. The dripping boredom is not simply water running through a faucet, but an acid dissolving a person from the inside. While the simile initially seems to have a neutral connotation, it eventually becomes starkly negative.

The narrator develops the danger of giving in to boredom. Just after the faucet simile, he claims that as soon as one would relax, "uncurl your fists and let your thoughts go," and think "this isn't so bad," one would hear gunfire. He suggests that being on edge at all times, not letting oneself feel bored nor relaxed, is the safest bet in war.

In later stories, the narrator and characters express a definite preference for action over boredom or stillness. For example, when O'Brien is sent to the battalion supply section after being shot for the second time, he resents being separated from the group—and from danger. In "The Ghost Soldiers," he describes this odd sort of military Stockholm syndrome. Even if he feels reasonably safe "for the first time in months," there are times when he misses "the adventure, even the danger, of the real war out in the boonies." He longs for how proximity to death makes one pay close attention to the world and feel close with the people around oneself.

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Explanation and Analysis—Fear and Escape:

"On the Rainy River" is full of similes and metaphors capturing O'Brien's fear of the war and urge to evade conscription. In the story, he contrasts his former understanding of courage—that he would step up and behave "like the heroes of our youth" when the need arose—with the crippling fear, rage, and numbness that he feels after being conscripted. Over the course of the story, O'Brien's situation, emotions, and surroundings are compared to things that are loaded with negative connotation.

The summer when he receives his draft notice, O'Brien works at a meatpacking plant, "removing blood clots from the necks of dead pigs." He comes to see his body as one of the carcasses, as though his life were "collapsing towards slaughter." Describing his paralysis with a simile, he likens his internal experience to hurtling down a funnel:

All around me the options seemed to be narrowing, as if I were hurtling down a huge black funnel, the whole world squeezing in tight.

This simile captures O'Brien's simultaneous loneliness and claustrophobia. His uncertainty and fear assumes a physical quality, squeezing him tightly. In the following pages, he describes his fear and urge to escape with more metaphors and similes that similarly make his emotions tangible or visible. As he drives along, for example, he feels "the fear spreading inside [him] like weeds." When he begins to consider escaping to Canada, which is just a few hundred miles north of his hometown, his fear of the war begins to intermingle with his fear of exile, shame, and ridicule. This multilayered fear becomes "a sickness" inside of him, a "real disease."

When he finally decides to go, he feels something "break open in [his] chest." As he drives north, he says that his flight was "like running a dead-end maze." Like the funnel simile, this maze simile provides a physical, visual idea of his claustrophobia and hopelessness. He knows that his choice to go north can't "come to a happy conclusion," but he doesn't know what else to do.

O'Brien eventually makes it to the Rainy River, "which separates Minnesota from Canada, and which for [him] separated one life from another." At the Tip Top Lodge, where Elroy Berdahl takes him in, he again understands his emotions and surroundings through negatively loaded similes and metaphors. The main building of the lodge leans to one side "like a cripple." Although O'Brien identifies Elroy as "the hero of [his] life," he writes that his eyes "had the bluish gray color of a razor blade." When Elroy first looks at him, O'Brien feels "a cutting sensation, as if his gaze were somehow slicing [him] open." During his week on the Rainy River, his sense of shame feels "like a weight pushing [him] toward the war." He describes it as an out-of-body experience:

During my time at the Tip Top Lodge I had the feeling that I’d slipped out of my own skin, hovering a few feet away while some poor yo-yo with my name and face tried to make his way toward a future he didn’t understand and didn’t want.

O'Brien's powerlessness over his future dissociates himself from his own body, as though he were a yo-yo. He likens his last day with Elroy to a vigil and likens his helplessness to toppling overboard and "being swept away by the silver waves." He feels like his whole life is spilling "out into the river" and "swirling away from [him]." After his experience in the boat, he drives south and, soon after, goes to Vietnam.

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Explanation and Analysis—Special Forces Hootch:

"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" culminates in a rich, visceral scene in which Mary Anne sits in the Special Forces Hootch chanting in a foreign language. The passage in which O'Brien describes this scene—by way of Rat Kiley's voice—contains hyperbole, imagery, and simile. These literary devices come together to reinforce the strangeness of the scene and the mystery of Mary Anne's transformation.

At first, Rat Kiley stands outside the hootch with Eddie Diamond and Mark Fossie. At this time, the imagery is mainly auditory, as the men listen to Mary Anne's high pitched chanting and the accompanying music. When Fossie slips inside, Kiley and Diamond follow. The imagery then revolves around the sense of smell:

There was a topmost scent of joss sticks and incense, like the fumes of some exotic smokehouse, but beneath the smoke lay a deeper and much more powerful stench. Impossible to describe, Rat said. It paralyzed your lungs. Thick and numbing, like an animal’s den, a mix of blood and scorched hair and excrement and the sweet-sour odor of moldering flesh—the stink of the kill.

This part of the passage also contains hyperbole, as Kiley claims the underlying scent is "impossible to describe" and that it "paralyzed your lungs." He nevertheless makes an attempt, using a simile that likens it to an animal's den. Besides featuring many layers of figurative language, the passage contains many layers of olfactory imagery: joss sticks and incense like fumes of an exotic smokehouse, a thick and numbing stench like a mix of blood and scorched hair and excrement and moldering flesh. Through this overpowering imagery, O'Brien gives the reader an eerie and disconcerted feeling. As the scene develops further, it becomes clear where some of the more fleshly smells come from—the origin of the "the stink of the kill":

On a post at the rear of the hootch was the decayed head of a large black leopard; strips of yellow-brown skin dangled from the overhead rafters. And bones. Stacks of bones—all kinds.

This passage feels hyperbolic, and the narrator seems to push the details as far as possible. Not only does the hootch contain "all kinds" of bones, Mary Anne is even wearing a necklace of human tongues. Despite these extreme elements, Kiley insists that everything he has told until this point "is from personal experience, the exact truth."

For the reader, it's worth asking what O'Brien is suggesting through some of the more severe aspects of Mary Anne's transformation. At the beginning of the story, he makes it quite evident that coming to Vietnam is the reason why Mary Anne changes. This may simply be because Mary Anne has the chance to travel far from home for the first time. It may also be because she is captivated by fighting, weapons, covert operations, and being granted entry into a masculine sphere. However, O'Brien seems to relate her character development to a certain exoticization of Vietnam, suggesting that there is something supernatural about the landscape and culture that sets her off.

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Explanation and Analysis—Leaking:

When O'Brien has a flashback to being shot in "The Ghost Soldiers," he uses figurative language to describe the physical sensations in his body. By way of similes and metaphors, he compares his gunshot wound to spilling, leaking, and becoming hollow.

He later experiences these same sensations during his scheme against Bobby Jorgenson, as he feels increasingly fragile and empty. Ultimately, O'Brien's scheme backfires, because he retraumatizes himself as he watches fear seize Jorgenson's body. He had originally set out to teach Jorgenson a lesson but winds up teaching himself one in the process.

As he watches Jorgenson, O'Brien experiences a flashback to the second time he was shot:

It was the same feeling I’d had out along the Song Tra Bong. Like I was losing myself, everything spilling out. I remembered how the bullet had made a soft puffing noise inside me. I remembered lying there for a long while, listening to the river, the gunfire and voices, how I kept calling out for a medic but how nobody came and how I finally reached back and touched the hole. The blood was warm like dishwater. I could feel my pants filling up with it. All this blood, I thought—I’ll be hollow.

In this passage, he uses a simile to compare his current and past feelings to "everything spilling out." He also uses a simile to compare his blood to "warm [...] dishwater." As it fills his pants, he feels as though he will become hollow. In the rest of the flashback, O'Brien continues to metaphorically liken his sensations to leaking:

I was still leaking. [...] I turned and clamped a hand against the wound and tried to plug it up. Leaking to death, I thought. Like a genie swirling out of a bottle—like a cloud of gas—I was drifting upward out of my own body.

Here, O'Brien uses a simile to compare the separation he feels from his body as he goes into shock to "a genie swirling out of a bottle" and "a cloud of gas." The leaking metaphor not only points to the physical sensation of his blood leaving his body, but it also captures the more spiritual or emotional sensation of his soul exiting his corporeal self. The shock both accentuates and shuts down his physical sense of being in a body.

In the end, O'Brien seems to be more negatively impacted by his plot to scare Jorgenson than Jorgenson himself is. While his plan revolved around getting even, the more important outcome seems to be O'Brien's processing of the extreme sensations and emotions he felt after he was shot. He can certainly blame, and even punish, Jorgenson for neglecting to treat him for shock, but the more pressing need is to reflect on what happened when he came face to face with his own mortality.

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The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien

The Things They Carried: Similes 6 key examples