Identity In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

The Vietnam War was a long conflict lasting between 1955 to 1975 between the communist North and the democratic south with help from the United States. More than 3 million people, including 58,000 American troops were killed in the conflict. Tim O 'brien 's short story “The Things They Carried” follows a platoon named alpha company during the peak of the Vietnam war led by first lieutenant Jimmy Cross who is very charismatic but in his mind he is unsure how to lead his squad because his mind tends to wander to a thought of a girl back home. Throughout the story he has overcome with emotions and guilt because he believes he his the reason for some of his squadmates death. “The Things They Carried” Embodies the hardship, reality, and price/toll of war, ultimately Tim O’brien writes this masterpiece as not of a war story, but as a love story and how that love changed a man.

Tim O’ Brien wants the reader to feel what he felt going through this nightmare. The device he uses is imagery and this is important because the reader can feel like they are a part of the war. He gives an account of the nightmare : “His entrenching tool like an ax, slashing.” I can imagine an angry lumber jack cutting deep into tree, which in his case represented his emotional feelings for the love he had for Martha. Martha was a young, beautiful girl with whom he was so in love, but Martha only saw Lieutenant Cross as a good friend. When you are trying to understand the emotions of a person is difficult because you are never in their shoes. O’Brien writes, “He sat at the bottom of his fox hole and wept.” I imagine a baby crawling back into the womb inside his mother stomach and he weeping like a baby. This image seems as if he was hiding from something for which he was not ready / that he feared or appeared unprepared.

In the repeated use of ideas of weight throughout his short story “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien highlights its pivotal symbolism: the intense burden of fear, especially of their own mortality, experienced by the soldiers, and thus weight’s role as the most important word in the text. O’Brien accomplishes this effect through recurring references to weight in relation to Ted Lavender’s death, and his frequent use of weight and weightlessness metaphors in the dreams of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and the other soldiers. Using the character’s ideas of weight to investigate their emotional reality, O’Brien’s explores heaviness and lightness in both physical and metaphysical connotations providing ample evidence for weight’s central symbolic purpose within the text.

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses Juxtaposition, Symbolism, and Point of View to show the burdens carried by the soldiers, and the effects war can have on individuals. He wrote the vignette in order to bring a greater awareness to Americans who were unaware of the dark reality of war. Juxtapositions, such as Desire versus Shame, Morality versus Crime, and Talking versus Distraction, are primary modes by which O’Brien shares the burdens of soldiers. Also, individual juxtapositions such as “Gentle Killer (O’Brien 66)” are used along with dichotomies as a window into the heart of the soldiers, and to show the ambivalence they held when making choices. “On the Rainy River” describes the Desire versus Shame conflict within O’Brien immediately after he was drafted for the Vietnam.

Burdens affect every person daily. From carrying a backpack to school, to dealing with a family member who is causing drama, everyone knows the heaviness of a burden. In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” O’Brien describes the physical and emotional baggage of young soldiers in Vietnam. O’Brien creates a very vivid and relatable feel with his story through the way he describes the physical, emotional, and actions of his characters due to the burdens of war.

During the mid 1950’s, the Vietnam War turned to be the modern pinnacle for battles resulting in the deaths of 58,000 American soldiers and millions of Vietnamese death. It saw the viable destruction of modern technology such as the newly fashioned M-16 rifle and the Apache, a helicopter made for mass destruction. For the soldiers experiencing Vietnam, it was truly an experience which would shape their hearts and minds forever. As evidenced in Tim O’ Brien’s The Things They Carried, The Vietnam War was an emotional tremor for the soldiers as they experienced deaths and created legendary tales which would define their lives, as well as future generations indefinitely.

When thinking about war, people do not usually think of the things that soldiers carry with them. However, the things the soldiers’ carry can help readers to better understand the reality of war. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brian, gives many examples of items which the soldiers bring along with them into war. Some people bring objects to remind them of something or give them hope, and others carry only emotional baggage, but everyone carries something with them. The Things They Carried shows readers the traumatizing effects of war and how people were able to cope with them using the things they carried.

In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien uses the experiences of characters such as Mary Anne, as well as others like O’Brien himself, Kiowa, and Bowker to define the meaning of courage. During the Vietnam War, many were forced to follow typical American standards of courage, that in order to be courageous, one must express heroism for others. However, others reject this societal ideal by having rare, unpredictable bravery in order to save themselves. Through Mary Anne’s reaction to the war, the reader can continue to define courage by considering the differences between Mary Anne and the men of the war, such as how their acquired morals, or lack thereof, and the expectations imposed onto them affect their war experiences.

The things they carried are a story written by Tim O’Brien about a group of US solders that are fighting in the Vietnam War. This story centers on First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross his band of brothers.  In this story we follow Lt Cross through the jungles, in the caves, and across the rice patties of Vietnam. We get the rare opportunity of looking into what a man thinks and does when he is stranded thousands of miles from his home, family, and friends. The name of this story suggests what it is about; the things they carried. It talks about the their experience in Vietnam and what they carried physically and mentally.

Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, describes the adversity a platoon of American soldiers had to overcome in the Vietnam War. Each soldier in the platoon has a specific role they were assigned to before arriving in Vietnam. The majority of things they carried were all necessities, but some also carried certain belongings or mementos back from home to enlighten their moods. The medic, Bob “Rat” Kiley, is affected by the tragedy all around, but it gives us an idea of what he was like back at home before the war.

After reading pages 19-20 of The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien provides readers with numerous literary devices that make it easier for readers to interpret the thoughts, actions, and lives of the soldiers. To begin with, the first literary device that he used is parallelism. O'Brien repeatedly uses the word and to add additional phrases that gives dramatic effect and emphasis on how the soldiers reacted to the war. He says, “They twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop.” When O'Brien says this, it lets readers know that being in war isn't a walk in the park, lots of pain is being inflicted upon the soldiers, like how they have to consider the possibility of dying which produces fear as their unconditioned response. Additionally, this can also be an example of the literary term cacophony. The words cringed, and sobbed, and begged, are words that sound unpleasant and describes the situation as unpalatable.

One event in a person’s life can greatly impact their way of living and instances of this in “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien and this includes experiences of loss of a loved one, forgiveness and unrequited love. It’s universal that our experiences as people affect us and shape who we are.

The story "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien is a story of Vietam soldiers and the things they carried; itmes of necessities of war protection, items of function of rank and field specialty, personal mementos and their feelings. The author depicts the load "to carry something was to hump, but it implied burdens", burdens each soldier carried while moving through the physical and emontional events of war (O'Brien 4 ). The author's use of storytelling helps the reader understand the physical and emotional impact of war and how each soldier coped while carrying items of "necessity or near-necessities" (O'Brien 2 ). I will be exploring the burden of "necessity and near-necessities"of the soldier's as they " hump" thier way

The protagonist, who is named Tim O’Brien, begins by describing an event that occurred in the middle of his Vietnam experience. “The Things They Carried” catalogs the variety of things his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company brought on their missions. Several of these things are intangible, including guilt and fear, while others are specific physical objects, including matches, morphine, M-16 rifles, and M&M’s candy. Tim O’Brien, the narrator and protagonist of the collection of stories. O’Brien is a pacifist who rationalizes his participation in Vietnam by concluding that his feelings of obligation toward his family and country are stronger influences than his own politics. When the war is over, he uses his ability to tell stories to deal with his guilt and confusion over the atrocities he witnessed in Vietnam, including the death of several of his fellow soldiers and of a Viet Cong soldier by his own hand. Throughout the collection, the same characters reappear in various stories. The first member of the Alpha Company to die is Ted Lavender, a “grunt,” or low-ranking soldier, who deals with his anxiety about the war by taking tranquilizers and smoking marijuana."Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should have done." (Chapter 1, pg. 5) Lavender is shot in the head on his way back from going to the bathroom, and his superior, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, blames himself for the tragedy. When Lavender is shot, Cross is distracting himself with

In “About Myself”, E.B. White convinces Americans that being identified or described by numbers is wrong and it needs to be put to an end. White uses caricature, exaggeration, and imagery to show them that numbers do not identify who they are or their identity. His article creates feelings like irritation and confusion, it makes Americans wonder how they should be identified as which makes them take E.B. seriously. Therefore, imagery is the key to persuading the Americans the right way to be described or