2. Point of View

Like The Sun Also Rises, The Things They Carried begins with an omniscient point of view, but then switches to a first person point of view. However, The Sun Also Rises quickly switches to its first person narrator while The Things They Carried continues as third person omniscient through twenty pages. The only hint of a first person narrator is the reference of "...the guy's dead. I mean really" (pg 12, O'Brien). After that, there is no other reference of first person point of view until the beginning of chapter two. The omniscient narrator allows the reader to be fully emerged into the Vietnam War and it's characters without worry of an opinionated narrator. Which if one looks at the time period of the Vietnam war, it was a very opinionated era in United States history. The omniscient narrator almost clearly expresses that 'this really is what happened to Ted Lavender. I am not making this up'. It also provides a good background of the journey the reader is soon to embark on. The question that remains is who is our first person narrator? My guess, the author himself, O'Brien.