Analysis Of Tim O ' Brien 's ' Love '

Tim O'Brien was a young American soldier fighting in the Vietnam war. Him and every one of the soldiers carried a weight on their shoulders and experienced fear, stress, love and longing. There's always a different meaning behind the stories in The Thing They Carried. Tim O'Brien uses irony, symbolism, and imagery to describe the emotional and psychological burdens that soldiers went through.

and I was afraid to look”(180). He shows that even though he was at war he lost people which affected him when he was young. Tim says in the book that loss is just a part of war, and its always going to be like that. In the end of the chapter “Speaking of courage” Tim O'Brien talks about his friend Kiowa. “He would have explained how his friend Kiowa slipped away that night beneath the dark swampy field.

The Vietnam War had a life changing effect on the soldiers, including O 'Brien. They came into the war as boys as young as seventeen and left either in body bags made of their own poncho or they came out alive. But were they ever really alive? No, they had their innocence ripped out. They weren 't young boys anymore. Their young selves were killed out in that jungle and all that was left was a carcass of gruesome memories of the tragedy of war, the deaths of their fellow soldiers. They changed as people. O 'Brien came into the war as a young man against war. A young soul believing that the Vietnam War was wrong and there was no need for fighting or killing. However, toward the end of the book he tells us the story of how he got revenge on a fellow soldier. This soldier, while in the middle of war, took too long in treating O 'Brien for a bullet wound and also should have treated him for shock. O 'Brien almost dies on the field but fortunately

Tim O’Brien wrote a memoir, in which he wrote about his life as a Vietnam soldier, called If I Die in a Combat Zone. Raised in Worthington, Minnesota, Tim O’Brien was influenced by wars while growing up (particularly the Korean War). Soon landing in the training facility at Fort Lewis in Washington, O’Brien’s life was about to change. In If I Die in a Combat Zone, author Tim O'Brien argued that the Vietnam War was full of courage through how the soldiers chose to stay and battle for their nation, his depictions of Plato, and through O’Brien’s experiences of his fellow soldier’s deaths.

For countless of people today, the Vietnam war is just something from the past, but for Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam War will endlessly be with him. This one year in Vietnam changes the lives of this platoon from emotional pain, physical pain, as well as muscle pain will commence to cloud their vision. The weight of the things that they carried takes great effect on them that they have to continue to endure on this one year trip in Vietnam and remember these memories for the rest of their lives..

Tim O'Brien is confused about the Vietnam War. He is getting drafted into it, but is also protesting it. He gets to boot camp and finds it very difficult to know that he is going off to a country far away from home and fighting a war that he didn't believe was morally right. Before O'Brien gets to Vietnam he visits a military Chaplin about his problem with the war. "O'Brien I am really surprised to hear this. You're a good kid but you are betraying you country when you say these things"(60). This says a lot about O'Brien's views on the Vietnam War. In the reading of the book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien explains his struggles in boot camp

In the book, O'Brien touched on what he as a writer and participant in the Vietnam War sometimes perceived in different ways and what actually happened. Overall he was looking at the "story truth" verses the "happening truth." When something happened within a war, such as a soldier dying, the truth was at many times exaggerated. You tell the story once, and the next time you add one little detail thus exaggerating the story over time. What happens is that when you are in the moment, things happen so fast. When you sit back and think upon it though, things go slower in your mind and you start to think something more of what actually happened.

Most authors who write about war stories write vividly; this is the same with Tim O’Brien as he describes the lives of the soldiers by using his own experiences as knowledge. In his short story “The Things They Carried” he skillfully reveals realistic scenes that portray psychological, physical and mental burdens carried by every soldier. He illustrates these burdens by discussing the weights that the soldiers carry, their psychological stress and the mental stress they have to undergo as each of them endure the harshness and ambiguity of the Vietnam War. One question we have to ask ourselves is if the three kinds of burdens carried by the soldier’s are equal in size? “As if in slow motion, frame by frame, the world would take on the old

The Vietnam War was a troubling time for Tim O’Brien. He battles with himself over a decision he makes, which makes him feel like a coward. He tells of a personal experience he has shared with no one not even his wife. His short story “On the Rainy River” is absolutely captivating. In this true story he uses a plethora of literary devices that leads the reader from beginning to end to visualize, feel, and sympathize with him as he tells his personal and emotional battle.

Bullets whiz by his head as soldiers drop to the ground around him. Some are shot dead. Some are wounded. Some are cowering in fear, trying to preserve their lives. Blood, limbs, smoke, and fire stain the battlefield like a painters’ canvas. Some try to carry on, leading their brothers to victory. Others stay still, crying to themselves about loved ones back home. War has everlasting traumatic effects on people. The soldiers that do survive will never live the same lives they did before the war. Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried does a great job explaining the effects of war on soldiers through many stories O’Brien experienced during the Vietnam War. From trying to escape the war, to his buddy Kiowa dying in muck, O’Brien expertly

In the book The Things They Carried, Tim said that it had been over two decades and every time O’Brien remembers it, makes it as if it was currently happening. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien claims, “Forty-three years old, and the war occurred a lifetime ago, and yet remembering makes it now.” (36) Everything Tim experienced when he was at war, still haunts him. The memories are basically nightmares which transport him back to being in the war. In a different article, Vietnam Veterans Still Have PTSD 40 Years After War, it states, “ "They started to come back one by one," says Evans, 69, of the nightmares started 13 years after she returned home from her one-year deployment in Vietnam from 1968-1969." I would see the fire, and then I would wake up in a cold sweat." ” (Traci Badalucco 1) Every time she would go to sleep, these memories - in the forms of nightmares - would come back. Everything experienced haunted her sleep making her unable to sleep. Psychological effects can affect everyday life, some people don’t even know the effects of war but yet they are still against

Tim O’Brien depicts some of the effects it has on them, as well as some coping mechanisms they use, in The Things they Carried. Some of the things the soldiers lose include their innocence and a few of their fellow soldiers. Everyone was affected by this differently, some felt guilt, others just pretended things were fine, or dreamt them back to life. The reactions of those experiencing loss also help define it and how powerful it can be. When Kiowa died, one of the boys felt the effects of immediate loss, leading him to believe he was to blame for his death. He felt that “he was alone. He’d lost everything. He’d lost Kiowa and his weapon and his flashlight and his girlfriend’s picture. He remembered this. He remembered wondering if he could lose himself” (O’Brien 171). Like him, many people feel very lost during hard times and question how much longer they can stay sane and handle the situation. In some unfortunate cases, when loss becomes too much, some commit suicide, or react violently. However, an alternate way of coping with loss (of lives and of sanity) that is seen in the novel is to completely ignore it. O’Brien recalls how “in Vietnam, too, [they] always had ways of making the dead seem not so dead. Shaking hands, that was one way. By slighting death, by acting, [they] pretended it was not the terrible thing it was…” (O’Brien 238). The thoughts of one of the characters portrays how much everyone

He describes, “I realize that in the important ways I haven’t changed at all. I was Timmy then; now I’m Tim...The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow” (223). “Timmy” was the narrator’s nickname as a kid in elementary school, implying his childhood innocence and naivety before he went to war. He described his life in three major stages: the first being “a little kid,” or Timmy, followed by his time in combat, in which he was often referred to as O’Brien, and then his current life as “a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow,” also known as Tim. While there were transitions in his life that took place between these stages, he chose to focus on the three most prominent of those phases; the exposition as a child, the climax as a soldier, and the resolution as a middle-aged author writing about his experiences in the war. When he was first drafted, he expected to change in a major way during the time that he served, but while he looked back with a writer’s point of view, he discovers that he is still the same person that he was before the war itself. This was utterly disappointing to the protagonist, who thought he was a changed man. If nothing is gained or lost from an experience, there is no point and no value in said event occurring in the first

Tim O’Brien, in his collection of short stories called “The things they carried”, develops the theme of soldiers ‘carrying’ many burdens throughout their lives. Through his persona, also named Tim O’Brien, O’Brien contradicts the stereotypical reason as to why the men joined the war. Jimmy Cross explores the unwanted burden placed on a Lieutenant of the platoon member’s responsibility. Further O’Brien explores the affect of the Vietnam War on the soldiers on their wellbeing through Norman Bowker, who suicides as he is unable to deal with the memories and the pressure faced due to the war. the emotional burden from the memories, physical weight ‘humped’ by them during the war and the mental pressures enforced upon them are the different

“I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story”(O’Brien 233). O’Brien throughout the story makes clear points that he isn’t the same as he once was before getting that draft paper. He now feels like a completely different person. He still keeps thinking back to the way he was before, young and innocent, nothing like his dramatic story telling self that he is now. Ever since he first left home, he had started a journey transforming himself from Timmy to