Disembodiment in the Things They Carried With some knowledge of the war, one can begin to appreciate Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. But when we consider the work in its strict historical context, another layer of meaning surfaces. Tim O'Brien is a veteran; as a result, there are many things he takes for granted (or so we think) and doesn't tell us. America's involvement in the Vietnam War resulted from domestic politics rather than the national spirit. American soldiers had to fight a war without a cause, that is, they were disembodied from the war. But O'Brien never tells us this explicitly. Viewed from a historical perspective, The Things They Carried contains several syntactical allusions to the idea of ​​the disembodiment of war. One of the most obvious allusions is “The Ghost Soldiers”. The very title seems to suggest disembodiment – ​​as if something is present, but nothing at all. Every time O'Brien bleeds out on the field, he says he feels "hollow." (O'Brien, 238) Is it due to blood loss or the ...