Comparing O' Brien's The Things They Carried and Ninh's The Sorrow of War

In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien created several allusions that each character endured during the Vietnam War. Throughout the story were vast representations of the things the soldiers carried both mentally and physically. The things they carried symbolized their individual roles internally and externally. In addition to the symbolism, imagination was a focal theme that stood out amongst the characters. This particular theme played a role as the silent killer amongst Lt. Cross and the platoon both individually and collectively as a group. The theme of imagination created an in depth look of how the war was perceived through each character which helped emphasize their thoughts from an emotional standpoint of being young men out at war.

“Everybody get down!!!” He freezes for a second and then it suddenly strikes him--his heart beats almost out of his chest, and his hands are shaking uncontrollably; this is war. This is Vietnam, a cruel war between the Americans and Vietnamese that takes place in a jungle. War is undoubtedly frightening and may seem like the number one threat for the soldiers, but it is not; it is not remotely close. The true threat at a time of war, especially in a place such as Vietnam is isolation. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien illustrates the danger of isolation and why it is the greatest danger in Vietnam. Soldiers are aware that they are detached from society; this continuously haunts them, and as a result, they damage themselves emotionally.

Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried” epitomizes the degradation of morals that war produces. This interpretation is personified in the characters who gradually blur the line dividing right and wrong as the motives for war itself become unclear. The morality of soldiers and the purpose of war are tied also to the truth the soldiers must tell themselves in order to participate in the gruesome and random killing which is falsely justified by the U.S government. The lack of purpose in the Vietnam War permanently altered the soldier’s perspective of how to react to situations and in most cases they turned to violence to express their frustration.

War is an objective obstacle that at most times can be avoided. Conversely, when it rears its ugly head it becomes bothersome and ends up dividing countries and families. One of the most memorable wars will be the Vietnam War. In “The Things They Carried,” Tim O'Brien uses contrast and contradictions to reveal the character’s feeling and the effect of war to bring about the theme of peace and war.

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

Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War is a novel that is a personal view of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Vietnamese soldier. Like the American novel “The things they carried”, this novel brings about the effects of war on people, and especially how it defeats the human capacity for things such as love and hope. Bao Ninh offers this realistic picture of the Vietnam War’s impact on the individual Vietnamese soldier through use of a series of reminiscences or flashbacks, jumping backwards and forwards in time between the events most salient in memory, events which take on a different theme each time they are examined. His main protagonist Kien, who is basically Bao himself, looks back not just at his ten years at

To this day the Vietnam War is still considered to be one of the most devastating wars in history and has been a topic of resentment to the American culture thirty-three years after its end. For the American public it’s marked as being the point in history where distrust in our government was at an all-time high, mainly because most of the war’s carnage was witnessed on television for the first time. For all the bloodshed American and Vietnamese soldiers suffered through, the war has left a perpetual mark not only on the United States but ultimately has left a permanent scar on the soldiers who fought and managed to survive the war. Renowned war poet, Bruce Weigl, like most young American men during the time was only nineteen when he

The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.

The Vietnam War was a controversial conflict that plagued the United States for many years. The loss of life caused by the war was devastating. For those who came back alive, their lives were profoundly changed. The impact the war had on servicemen would affect them for the rest of their lives; each soldier may have only played one small part in the war, but the war played a huge part in their lives. They went in feeling one way, and came home feeling completely different. In the book Vietnam Perkasie, W.D. Ehrhart describes his change from a proud young American Marine to a man filled with immense confusion, anger, and guilt over the atrocities he witnessed and participated in during the war.

With the Vietnam War fresh in Le’s memory, recurring themes of the war are vivid throughout his work. As Le was growing up in California at a young age, he had little exposure to his Vietnamese culture which was eventually fed to him through American popular culture rather than his own experiences. This caused him to disassociate whether

War is woven into the familial aspects of this novel. It not only separated families, but also separated Vietnam itself, dividing the people and therefore compromising the idea of unity and cultural identity. The Vietnam War left a residue of resentment

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

Imagine being suddenly drafted to war, not prepared for the death and horror. Young, confused, scared, naïve. During the Vietnam War, many young men were forced to face a war that changed them, and not necessarily for the better. Many of the men who went to war experienced terrors that changed them in a way that affected their lives after, as shown by countless war stories and poems. Norman Bowker, from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (1990), is a perfect example of the hard-bitten war veteran archetype. Fighting in the Vietnam War and feeling as if he had a part in his friend’s death (Kiowa) caused him so much guilt and pain that he ended up hanging himself after endlessly driving around a lake when returning home. Similarly, Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem, “The Dead at Quang Tri”, emphasizes the ghosts that haunt soldiers during and after war. Overall, the haunting memories that characters deal with in war stories, like O’Brien and Komunyakaa’s, display the long lasting effects of death and war on the minds of soldiers.

Throughout the time period of the Vietnam War, the thousands of men who fought during this time were looked down upon. Many people in the United States were against the war and gave no appreciation to soldiers fighting the Vietnam War. In his novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, showed the guilt and shame that soldiers themselves went through being in the Vietnam War. Through not feeling brave and heroic enough, or feeling the fear of embarrassing not only themselves, but their families and hometowns if they were to flee from the war, they constantly felt regret and shame. No matter where you look in the story of The Things They Carried, you will always see the shame and guilt the soldiers are carrying.

In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, Mary Anne Bell and Mark Fossie have contrasting feelings for the nature of Vietnam. Characters who learn to love Vietnam are the ones able to abandon their American identity and adapt to new surroundings. This shows that American soldiers felt that war can change them dramatically. Mary Anne is willing to go beyond her American ways to see and experience the true meaning of war in Vietnam. She embraces all the beauty and culture Vietnam has to offer, allowing her to distance herself from American society.