Experiences and Emotions in the Things They Carried Tim O'Brien's Things They Carried is not a novel about the Vietnam War. “It is a story about soldiers and their experiences and emotions from war” (King 182). O'Brien makes several statements about war through these dynamic characters. It shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressure of war, makes an effective anti-war statement, and comments on the reversal of a social deviation in the norm. Skillfully employing the stylistic technique of specific and conscious selection of details and using connotative diction, O'Brien makes each point fully and convincingly. The violent nature acquired by soldiers during their tour in Vietnam is one of O'Brien's predominant themes in his novel. . By consciously selecting highly descriptive details that reveal the men's drastic change in behavior, O'Brien creates in the reader an understanding of the war's effects on its participants. One of the soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very kind person, wore a thumb... The thumb was dark brown, rubbery to the touch... It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen" ( O'Brien 13). Bowler had been a very good-natured person in civilian life, but the war makes him a very tough and emotionally emotionless soldier, who carries around a severed finger as a trophy, proud of his kill. The transformation shown through Bowler is an excellent indicator of the psychological and emotional change most soldiers go through. Taking an innocent young man from sensitive to apathetic, from caring to hateful, requires great strength; war provides this strength. However, the changes are often more drastic. A soldier named "Ted Lavender adopted an orphaned puppy...Azar tied it to a Claymore landmine and crushed the firing device" (O'Brien 39). Azar has gone mad; killing a puppy that someone else adopted is horrible. However, the infliction of violence has become the norm of behavior for these men; the fleeting moment of compassion shown by one man is immediately erased by another, restoring order within the group. O'Brien here shows a hint of sensitivity between the men to create a striking contrast between the past and the present for these men. The effect produced on the reader by this contrast is one of horror; thus fulfilling O'Brien's aim, to convince the reader of the gravely negative effects of the war.