Analysis Of Tim O ' Brien 's ' Love '

It is very apparent that Tim O’Brien, as of writing this story, is afflicted with what we now call PTSD. This is shown by how quickly the story turns from him being at home with his daughter, to back on the battlefield in the Vietnam War. He goes into great detail about this event. From the weather and environment, to him and his partner taking watch shifts, even to how the man he killed looked and what he was wearing. If you have PTSD one of the side effects is having unwanted memories of your experiences. It is shown that Tim has this by the sentence “I’ll look up and see the young man coming out of the morning fog.” He will be at home, sitting on the sofa reading a newspaper, but when he looks up he can see the man he killed. This is an unwanted memory to him. Having PTSD has truly taken a toll on Mr. O’Brien. He has since moved on, but he can never truly forget that experience. He tries to forget but he simply cannot due to his condition. “Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t,” is what he writes in his story “Ambush” as he tells of his struggles with PTSD. If he told his daughter what happened, not only would he most likely not be able to stop talking and describing the situation he was thrust into, but he would also remember the gunshots and explosions. He would be back on the battlefield. He would maybe even try to harm his wife or daughter due to

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..

Everyday life is great at making you who you are or what you have become. It is amazing how one choice or event can change someones life. This is especially true when it comes to the Vietnam War. There were so many lives that changed during this time. The Vietnam War brought us the end of the draft and instated a volunteer army which we still have to this day. This war also helped give the right for 18 year olds to vote which was a big help to Nixon’s second term as president. With this said the Vietnam War has greatly affected America and Tim O’Brien is one of those people. O’Brien says he wasn't into the war however I think he eventually discovered a new form of happiness from creating his amazing stories with his experiences in the

In this story used a lot of repetition. He repeats the description this man as the guy lay dead on the ground. He also creates a life for this guy. what he thinks his life was and going to be. He was humanizing him unlike others on his platoon. This repetition shows how his mind was coping with him taking this guy’s life. This is one common symptom of PTSD; when traumatic events replay in his mind. During this moment he had a internal conflict. During this he was creating a life for this guy. He doesn't know this guy. so why did he do this? Did he do this to cope with taking his life? Wouldn't that make him feel more worse about killing him? This is one of the negative ways of coping with something. This would make it harder for him to survive during the war, but this also allowed him to keep his humanity. By humanizing him he made himself vulnerable to harm from anyone in the area. This is bad for Tim O’brien survival in the

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

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

Author’s Background-Tim O’Brien was born on October 1, 1946, in Austin, Minnesota, but was raised in Worthington D.C. At the time his mother was a teacher at an Elementary school and his father an insurance salesman who later became a sailor in World War II. He thought of becoming a writer because of his father's accounts of World War II battles. Then soon after he received his draft and joined the military. He served in the military from 1969 to 1970 as a foot soldier after then leaving the army. After leaving the army he started writing and later published first writing about his personal war experiences like the ones that inspired him when he hear them from his father and called it “If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home”.

In an attempt to take away some of the guilt he has placed upon himself from the Vietnam War, O’Brien tells his tales –in the fictional book The Things They Carried- of the many challenges he faced as a soldier. In On the Rainy River, through the illusions on the banks of the river he sees his past, present and future each memory reveals a part of him. O’Brien’s thoughtful story about death -shown in The Man I Killed- illustrates that the jungles of Vietnam blur boundaries between hallucinations and actuality. The killing of soldiers both American and Vietnamese feed into the disillusions and sensations built up from war, but soldiers use an “anesthetic” to shelter themselves from everything that goes on.

Tim O’Brien uses storytelling to show the experiences the young soldiers had faced during the war. The Vietnam War was a medium that allowed for the creation of several different stories pertained to each soldier. Tim O’Brien thus justifies his use of storytelling

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

In the poem, The Love song, written by T.S. Elliot, J Alfred Prufrock is a man who is very lonely and insecure. He goes throughout his life wishing for a change, but never stepping up to the plate and actually making a change. The title of the poem portrays to the reader that the poem is going to be full of love and romance. The reader soon found out later that the poem is just the opposite from the title, a sad, lonesome man who is not only lacking love, but also lacking self confidence and self esteem.