Emotions In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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.

Throughout the chapter of “How To Tell A True War Story” the reader is conflicted due to the author’s writing style. Through O’Brien’s writing in the book, the reader is left to ponder between what the author says is true vs what the actual truth is. He writes, “In any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes it own happening and has to be told that way,” (O’Brien 71). Tim O'Brien generally tells the reader that in war stories it is difficult to split apart the truth and what the truth seemed like. Therefore, the stories then become what may have seemed to happen because the truth gets mixed in. At the end of the chapter O’Brien says, “All you can do is tell it one more time, patiently, adding and subtracting, making up

In the fictional novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien vividly explains the fear and trauma the soldiers encountered during the Vietnam War. Many of these soldiers are very young and inexperienced. They begin to witness their acquaintances’ tragic demise, and kill other innocent lives on their own. Many people have a background knowledge on the basis of what soldiers face each day, but they don’t have a clear understanding of what goes through these individual’s minds when they’re at war. O’Brien gives descriptive details on the soldiers’ true character by appealing to emotions, using antithesis and imagery.

In The Things They Carried, Tim O 'Brien uses a variety of stories to explain the life experiences that he and many of his fellow soldiers endured during a single year in Vietnam. He tells these stories in a way that we can connect to these experiences. We never spent time in Vietnam, but O 'Brien wants us to feel like we were there. O 'Brien uses what he calls "story-truth" to write these stories. The outcome or the people may be different but the feeling is real; that 's the truth in the story, the feeling. He wants us to feel what he felt, see what he saw. He doesn 't just tell us what was happening exactly; he tells a fictional story that conveys the same emotion. He plays with the truth, that 's the reason why this book is a work of

O’Brien knows this. He does not shy away from long, thoughtful passages that explain the basic realities of battlefield life. Look at In the Field, when Jimmy Cross tries to think of what precisely caused Kiowa’s death. “You could blame the war. You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going into it... In the field, though, the causes were immediate. A moment of carelessness or bad judgment or plain stupidity carried consequences that lasted forever” (O’Brien 169). This passage articulates the immediacy and constant danger of war. Every moment, every river or rainstorm could mean death. That is what Lamott might call “meat-and-potato truth” to the soldiers. A concept so poignant can easily transcend words, and if O’Brien had had any reluctance to delve so deeply into how the Lieutenant thinks, it could have been lost in translation. Only through O’Brien’s intimate musing comes a shadow of enormous reality, the “meat-and-potato

Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” is based on what soldiers went through facing war, and what they carried physically as well as emotionally. All of this pressure from war can cause and has caused post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the soldiers. “PTSD is the development of a set of symptoms in the aftermath of psychologically distressing event—an event “outside the range of normal human experience.”” (Roberts 3). PTSD is a disorder that can happen to anyone, but many see it diagnosed in war veterans, from the effects of war. This disorder can ranges from outburst to solitude and can affect each person in a different way. Some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are re-experiencing or flashbacks,

To witness other people being killed and letting your mind run its course and eat away at you asking yourself are you the next one? This is one of the main reasons why we need to appreciate the soldiers and veterans who have served for their country, they are brave people and have made huge sacrifices for us all. They do stuff that others are not willing to do to protect the freedom that was one of the main reasons why this great country im glad to call my home was established in the first place. These experiences that these soldiers go through can change them for the rest of their life. War and the tramuatizing stuff that goes with it can cause psychological problems that are hard to live with. My girlfriends father served in the military and has gone through some of these terrible things first hand and they have definitely changed him for life. Mr. Thornberry had been in the milirary for 8 years and was in combat during the desert storm. He saw things that no man would ever wish to see in his life. A friend taken away right before his own eyes while he was under fire but managed to get out of it with the help of his comrades. Although he was not really hurt physically he was mentally. He has reoccuring flashbacks of the event that took place and has gone through treatments and is now taking medicine but still that is not enough he still wakes up somenights from the night terrors that infest his mind. He once told me “I will never be the same man” (Thornberry 2016). In the things they carried there are many examples of ptsd throughout the book. For example when Norman Bowker witnessed Kiowa sucked into a pile of crap right before his eyes and had a chance to save her but risked being sucked in as well so he decided he would just save himself. This death changed Norman

This book is an actual war story where it has numerous of stories about his experiences. But under all those harsh stories and events lies one of the most powerful forces, and that is love. Could it be that instead these stories are based on love and not war? When I say love I do not mean that they are all homosexual but rather they are best friends, battle buddies, loyal to each other. They may get into fights but they all have each others back at the end of the day and I’m going to go through three characters and how they connected with the author, Tim O’Brien.

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

Similarly, the young unnamed soldier holds himself solely accountable for the death of his cherished friend. This boy exhausts himself as he tries to handle the loss by recounting his last memories of Kiowa over and over, frantically searching for the laminated picture of his girlfriend, all the while moving his lips. “Like Jimmy Cross, the boy was explaining to an absent judge. It wasn’t to defend himself. The boy recognized his own guilt and wanted only to lay out

Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Things They Carried” is about a platoon of seventeen soldiers that are in the Vietnam war. The focus of the story is on First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross going back and forth from Vietnam and his memory for Martha, “an English major at Mount Sebastian” (323). The narration bounces around during the telling of the story, as if the story is being told from memory years after the war. The narration of the story is told around the death of one of the soldiers, Ted Lavender. As the platoon “humped” (324) through the Vietnam wilderness outside the village of Than Khe, the narrator gives the reader lists of military issued equipment and what each piece weighs. “They would never be at a loss for things to carry” (332) for these lists changed depending on the mission and the soldiers mental state, as does their weight. Along with their military issued equipment they also carry personal belongings, as well as emotional baggage. This essay will analyze the personal and emotional things they carry and whether they are helpful or a burden.

In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the man is drafted into the Vietnam War where he faces many obstacles mentally and physically. The characters are heavily impacted by the war’s power and try to find ways within themselves to escape its brutality. The author uses language and character’s reactions to their inner conflicts to illustrate the mental stresses that arise in war.

One of the main characters in the short story “The Things They Carried”, written by Tim O’Brien, is a twenty-four year old Lieutenant named Jimmy Cross. Jimmy is the assigned leader of his infantry unit in the Vietnam War, but does not assume his role accordingly. Instead, he’s constantly daydreaming, along with obsessing, over his letters and gifts from Martha. Martha is a student at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, Jimmy’s home state. He believes that he is in love with Martha, although she shows no signs of loving him. This obsession is a fantasy that he uses to escape from reality, as well as, take his mind off of the war that surrounds him, in Vietnam. The rest of the men in his squad have items that they carry too, as a way

In The Things They Carried, Tim had a flashback of the first man he had killed. While on ambush with Kiowa, he threw a grenade at a Vietnamese soldier walking the My Khe trail but he immediately regretted it. Tim sat and stared at the man, thinking about everything he took away from the young soldier all because of one decision. While reflecting upon that decision, Tim says, “Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t. In the ordinary hours of life I try not to dwell on it, but now and then, when I’m reading a newspaper or just sitting alone in a room, I’ll look up and see the young man step out of the morning fog” (O’Brien 128). He felt as if he had lost dignity rather than gained it. Even though he was just doing what he had been trained to do, he felt that what he had done was not right and let it eat away at him for years to come. When his daughter asked him if he had ever killed anybody he told her no because he didn’t feel right telling her what he had done, which I believe was a hardship many soldiers had to face. John Musgrave is a veteran of the Vietnam War and went through an event very similar to Tim’s. In the article “Vietnam Reckoning”, John says, “I only killed one human being in Vietnam, and that was the first man I ever killed. I was sick with guilt about killing the guy and thinking

The psychological burden that plagues the soldiers the most is fear. The fear of death. Even though the soldiers’ experience fear at some point, showing that fear only reveals vulnerabilities to the enemy and sometimes the crueler fellow soldiers. “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing – these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” (O'Brien, 1990) The