Ambiguity, Stories and Emotion

Throughout the book, O’Brien repeatedly states his struggles in telling “a true war story.” One of the obstacle he faces in telling “a true war story” is the readers’ misconception that “truth” must be an event and not an emotion. To begin, O’Brien claims “A true war story is never moral… If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted… then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie… you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (68-69) and “All of us… like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth” (38). In these two statements, O’Brien has shown us that people want not a

Much of what they experienced was normal in regards to war: death, fear, and the loss of oneself. These men carried the burdens of war on their back, both materially and psychologically. This quote demonstrates how stories remain forever no matter how much one wants to forget. The main protagonist, Tim O’brien, wishes he can forget much of what he had witnessed in war, but fails to do so. He even tries to alter and change the way events actually happened.

     In “How to Tell a True War Story” O’Brien explores the relationship between the events during a war and the art of telling those events. O’Brien doesn’t come to a conclusion on what is a true war story. He writes that one can’t generalize the story as well. According to O’Brien, war can be anything from love and beauty to the most horrid

While reading “The Raid” by Leo Tolstoy, one is instantly struck by the strong contrast between the peaceful nature scenes and the violent battle scenes. One minute the sounds of crickets and frogs are charmingly echoing through the night, and the next you can hear the “clang of a heavy gun” and the “sound of bayonets touching one another” (Tolstoy 20). In one scene, the generals and majors stand watching the gory battle below, yet they continue to discuss the beautiful nature around them as if nothing else could possibly be worth their attention (Tolstoy 25). However, upon closer readings, it becomes evident that the war and nature scenes are not as separate as they seem. As the story progresses, the two begin to weave together, until distinguishing them is nearly impossible. Indeed, this subtly merger can be seen throughout multiple scenes as the story evolves.

From the mightiest of Redwoods to the tiniest bacterium, nature encapsulates mankind. Nature surrounds humanity as a sovereign witness to man’s most astounding triumphs, and the disgusting atrocities perpetrated by man against his fellow man. Regardless of the circumstances, nature remains unbiased in the face of all conflicts and struggles. Nature cannot deceive or mislead like humanity can. It is for this reason why nature has an ideal perspective to view history. As shown through Mark Fiege’s book The Republic of Nature: an Environmental History of the United States, the lense of nature is extremely important to both readers and historians alike due to the fact that unlike almost all other sources, nature is unbiased and honest. This is exemplified through Fiege’s exploration of the history of the the construction of the Lincoln Memorial, the Salem witch trials, and natural law.

This cluster of paradoxes and emotions genuinely defines what the soldiers felt during and after their service in war. Explaining a war story is a difficult task. As a person attempts to explain what they experienced, they become overwhelmed, get caught up in their own emotions, and in result the truth about war is never expressed. “Because she wasn’t listening. It wasn’t a war story.

“War stories” are shared by people all over the world, describing exhilarating experiences one encompasses during a war. However, these stories have been known for hyperbolizing details of the story, deeming it a “lie.” Tim O’Brien, the author of “How to Tell a True War Story,” examines the complex relationship between war experience and storytelling. The tale is told partly from O’Brien’s role as a soldier, as a reprise of several Vietnam stories, and half of his role as a storyteller, as a discussion on the art of storytelling. O’Brien provides detailed commentary on storytelling and blurs the division between truth and fiction through a series of paradoxical commentaries.

Memories and stories swarming the mind and twisted by imagination are the only glimpse of humanity a man can hold on to while at war. Through stories, men at war can share their thinning humanity with one another. The deafening silence of war defeats the human spirit and moral compass, thus it is not only man against man but man against sanity. Tim O 'Brien 's “The Things They Carried” provides a narrative of soldiers in the Vietnam War holding on to the only parts of themselves through their imagination. O’Brien employs symbolic tokens, heavy characterization, and the grueling conflict of man to illustrate how soldiers create metaphorical stories to ease the burden of war.

When being told a war story, one automatically assumes all that they are hearing is factual, and that all the trauma, devastation, and victory really happened. However, in the fictional The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, he turns the idea on its head: a story does not necessarily have to be honest if the emotions behind the story are. O’Brien uses techniques such as hyperbolic characters and verisimilitude to show his audience that while the verbatim anecdotes are not true, the sentiment behind them is true. Through the characters of Mary Anne and Norman Bowker, O’Brien successfully uses the audience’s trust against them to create varying images of unbelievability and believability, which ultimately helps achieve the goal of making his

"The difference between fairy tales and war stories is that fairy tales begin with 'Once upon a time,' while war stories begin with 'Shit, I was there!'" (Lomperis 41). How does one tell a good war story? Is it important to be accurate to the events that took place? Does the reader need to trust the narrator? In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien examines what it takes to tell a good war story. He uses his own experiences in Vietnam in conjunction with his imagination to weave together a series of short stories into a novel.

As an illustration, the author describes the scenery of the battlefield, “The most vivid images of the war show soldiers facing the hardships and terrors of battle. Some confronted the enemy in well-defined battles in the highlands. Others cut their way through the jungle, where they heard but seldom saw the enemy. Still others waded through rice paddies and searched rural villages for guerrillas… They were rarely safe. Enemy rockets and mortars could--and did--strike anywhere” (Boyer 2). By using descriptive language, the author illustrates the soldiers surroundings and evoke the reader’s sense of terror. With this in mind, this gives the readers a better understanding of how inhumane war is and how the severity of war torments soldiers by them through physiological traumatizing experiences. Furthermore, the author quotes a nurse recalling her experiences in a field hospital, “We really saw the worse of it, because the nurses never saw any of the victories...I remember one boy who was brought in missing two legs and an arm, and his eyes were bandaged. A general came in later and pinned a Purple Heart on the boy’s hospital gown, and the horror of it all was so amazing that it just took my breath away. You thought, was this supposed to be an even trade?” (Boyer 2). By using imagery, the author cites a nurse who describes the boy’s injuries in detail and appeals

In this book, Tim O’brien reveals all his experiences in detail about the war; as well as stories about his fellow soldiers, and makes a true, but over the top about them. He explains how he feels through stories that are difficult to clearly identify as “true.” This book has a lot of themes, death and violence is one of the major themes.

“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a non fiction body of fiction writing. While names, characters and situations are imaginary, the circumstances encountered by the people represented in the war depicted are very much real.There is an intriguing story line beneath yet another story that is being told and with each sentence the more it resonates. There is the story of unrequited love, unabashed bravery, and unfathomable pain. Throughout all of this turmoil and what is the very essence of discomfort, the story moves forward and the reader is compelled to follow. In relating the layers of stories wrapped into the writing O’Brien masterfully uses the techniques of repetition, pattern and indirect style of writing to emphasize that no amount of physical weight compares to the mental and

In this essay, I will discuss how Tim O’Brien’s works “The Things They Carried” and “If I Die in a Combat Zone” reveal the individual human stories that are lost in war. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien reveals the war stories of Alpha Company and shows how human each soldier is. In “If I Die in a Combat Zone” O’Brien tells his story with clarity, little of the dreamlike quality of “Things They Carried” is in this earlier work, which uses more blunt language that doesn’t hold back. In “If I Die” O’Brien reveals his own personal journey through war and what he experienced. O’Brien’s works prove a point that men, humans fight wars, not ideas. Phil Klay’s novel “Redeployment” is another novel that attempts to humanize soldiers in war. “Redeployment” is an anthology series, each chapter attempts to let us in the head of a new character – set in Afghanistan or in the United States – that is struggling with the current troubles of war. With the help of Phil Klay’s novel I will show how O’Brien’s works illustrate and highlight each story that make a war.

In American Literature many authors write about nature and how nature affects man's lives. In life, nature is an important part of people. Many people live, work, or partake in revelry in nature. Nature has received attention from authors spanning several centuries. Their attitudes vary over time and also reflect the different outlooks of the authors who chose to discuss this important historical movement. A further examination of this movement, reveals prevalence of nature's influence on man and how it affects their lives.