In The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien illustrates the effects of war on soldiers. A collaboration of numerous stories, O’Brien not only makes a firm anti-Vietnam statement, but exemplifies the ways that war alters a soldiers’ perspective on life. As a response to war, soldiers experience lack of purpose, inability to determine right from wrong, inability to deal with death, disconnection from their original homes, and are even driven to insanity.
Early in the war, soldiers would waste free time playing mundane games such as checkers. As O’Brien describes, “There was something restful about it, something orderly and reassuring. There were red checkers and black checkers. The playing field was laid out in a strict grid, no tunnels or mountains or jungles” (32). They played checkers to establish a set of rules in their lives. Living in Vietnam as soldiers during the war, where death could come at any moment; the war affected the soldiers by causing them to search for reality in such trivial things as checkers. As soldiers spend their free time engaging in checkers and search for reality, they react by losing their ability to determine right from wrong.