SOURCE: Smith, Lorrie N. “‘The Things Men Do’: The Gendered Subtext in Tim O'Brien's Esquire Stories.” Critique 36, no. 1 (fall 1994): 16-40.

In the following essay, Smith examines the representations of masculinity and femininity in five of the stories in The Things They Carried.

Tim O'Brien's 1990 book of interlocked stories, The Things They Carried, garnered one rave review after another, reinforcing O'Brien's already established position as one of the most important veteran writers of the Vietnam War. The Penguin paperback edition serves up six pages of superlative blurbs like “consummate artistry,” “classic,” “the best American writer of his generation,” “unique,” and “master work.” A brilliant metafictionist, O'Brien captures the moral and ontological uncertainty experienced by men at war, along with enough visceral realism to “make the stomach believe,” as his fictional narrator, Tim O'Brien, puts it. This narrator's name and the book's dedication to its own fictional characters are just...