Free Things They Carried Essays: Unrealism Analysis

Tim O’Brien uses two narrative techniques in “How to Tell a True War Story”. First he splits the story into three different sections. The first part being Rat Kiley writing his letter to Curt Lemon’s sister about the relationship they had. The next section is describing the correct way of writing a “true war story”. And the last is O’Brien looking back on stories and his story telling techniques. O’Brien separates the story into three different parts to give the reader an example of a story that is “true”. The next section would about the truth about writing a true story and the last section is his personal reflection on the whole situation. The other narrative technique is that O’Brien retells certain events. He retells how Curt Lemon died, he retells Mitchell Sanders telling a story, and he retells how women react when you tell them stories about the war. Tim O’Brien retells stories and

In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses this story as a coping mechanism; to tell part of his stories and others that are fiction from the Vietnamese War. This is shown by using a fictions character’s voice, deeper meaning in what soldier’s carried, motivation in decision making, telling a war story, becoming a new person and the outcome of a war in one person. Tim O’ Brien uses a psychological approach to tell his sorrows, and some happiness from his stories from the war. Each part, each story is supposed to represent a deeper meaning on how O’Brien dealt, and will deal with his past. In war, a way to

The novel, The Things They Carried is a story of one man’s accounts resulting to his tour of duty in Vietnam. Many of the men that are discussed in the book continued to be effected by the war, long after they returned home. Men were left emotionally scared, even if they managed to get out of the war physically unharmed. The

There are many levels of truth in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. This novel deals with story-telling as an act of communication and therapy, rather than a mere recital of fact. In the telling of war stories, and instruction in their telling, O'Brien shows that truth is unimportant in communicating human emotion through stories.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien expresses the importance of a story-truth, as opposed to a happening-truth by use of literary elements in his writing. The novel is about war and the guilt it leaves on everyone involved in the war. Story-truth is not exactly what happened, but uses part of the truth and part made up in order to express the truth of what emotion was felt, which an important thematic element in the novel is. The three literary devices he uses to express this are diction, imagery, juxtaposition, and hyperbole. All of these elements allow the reader to identify emotion that is expressed in each story, as though that were the complete truth.

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

In this book, the usage of the surrealism is either used as exaggeration or combine the story that really happened along with what could have or should have happened, or at least O'Brien´s thoughts were included to make a story. Surrealism can sometimes reveal the truth, but at the same time, can confuse the readers or the audience because they would probably not know the truth unless they were present at that moment, when the story took place. Not only it can confuse the readers or the audience, if they do not know the truth and they do not recognize that the story has surrealism in it, they would probably take it as truth. Especially in this book, because the story deals with the war story and the author was a soldier at that war, the audience will hardly find whether the story in the book really happened or not, more likely to not know the situation when the war did not took place in U.S. or happened few decades ago. What makes the surrealism is that when the story contains the word ¨seems¨ and the phrase that contains too many descriptive or figurative languages, because when the story is being descriptive, there are high chance that the writer is making up the story. The author who uses surrealism in their non-fiction book, usually writes the truth with some exaggerations to make the reader more entertaining or describe more so they can understand it better, however, many people

Some were true while some were just to portray heroism and were filled with false facts. The story “How to Tell a True War story” written by Tim O’Brien illustrates the difference between true and fictional war sorties. To show this O’Brien used two different stories and compared them. In both the stories, the common theme is that war brings melancholy and pain to everyone. The first story was about two friends Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley. Curt Lemmon accidently dies by stepping on a barbed wire. The second story was about a military troop which was sent to check the enemy movements. Both the stories are based on real war situations. The book was published after the Vietnam

"The Things They Carried," is a story about drafted soldiers during the Vietnam era who were sent to the Vietnam War. The author, Tim O’Brien, describes the things that the men carry during their tour of duty. The items carried are both physical and impalpable items and what these things are is subject to the individual soldier. They carry the necessities for survival in the jungles of Vietnam as well as the personal things each soldier feels necessary to make life as comfortable as possible. Additionally, each of the men carries the memories and fears of past and present experiences. The heaviness of the impalpable items is as tangible as that of any physical item, and not so easy to cast away. The literary argument in which the novel

The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War that the author, Tim O’Brien, uses to convey his experiences and feelings about the war. The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O’Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. To O’Brien the novel is not only a compilation of stories, but also a release of the fears, sadness, and anger that he has felt because of the Vietnam War.

Throughout The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien it is difficult to separate what is fictitious, and what is true. During the entire work there are two different “truths”, which are “story truth” and “happening truth”. “Happening truth” is the actual events that happen, and is the foundation or time line on which the story is built on. “Story truth” is the molding or re-shaping of the “happening truth” that allows the story to be believable and enjoyable. It is not easy to distinguish “happening truth” from “story truth”, and at times during the novel O’brien reveals which is which. On the other hand, when the reader is blind to

Tim O’Brien’s, The Things they Carried is a riveting tale of struggle and sacrifice, self indulgence and self pity, and the intrapersonal battles that reeked havoc on even the most battle tested soldiers. O’Brien is able to express these ideas through eloquent writing and descriptive language that makes the reader feel as if he were there. The struggle to avoid cowardice is a prevailing idea in all of O’Brien’s stories.

Mary Anne was the girlfriend of a soldier stationed with Kiley and one night he got the bright idea to bring his girlfriend to the base. When Mary Anne arrived she was sweet and innocent and had no idea what she had just gotten herself into, just like most of the soldiers. By the end of the story, Mary Anne had become a completely different person, she had adopted the bush way of life, started going on late night ambushes with the Green Berets, and acquired a necklace of human tongues. (pages 85-110) The men were all once innocent and quiet, but through the many months in the bush, they began to change. They became more vulgar, extraverted, and confrontational. They feared for their lives and always felt like they had to watch their

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is a wonderful and personal look into one of this countries darkest times. The vivid imagery that the author uses lets the reader actually experience the feeling of actually being in the war. By using the cultural studies method of literary criticism, we can use the social conditions during the time of the writing to explore beneath the surface. What we find underneath just might be more interesting than the story itself.

The soldiers didn't even have to have gone home to begin to feel the effects of the war. Rat Kiley, a young medic in Vietnam started to feel the effects right then and there, and it resulted in him shooting himself in order to escape the war. The conditions of the war, the long night time treks, the silence, broken only by the sounds of ghosts, the constant darkness. It could drive anyone crazy. The constant death too, ‘… too many body bags… too much gore…'. Sometimes this paranoia-based insanity would embody itself in the form of something randomly chosen yet relevant, something for the person to obsess about in order to temporarily distance themselves from what was actually occurring around them. At times the obsessing would involve their immediate surrounds, like Rat Kiley who began to those around him as nothing more than bodies, and began to imagine how they would look without an arm, or a leg, or even ‘… what it would feel like to pick up the head and carry it over to a chopper and dump it in…'. It could even take form as self obsession, Rat Kiley began to envision his own death, parts of his own body being removed and eaten by the insects in Vietnam. Kiley's constant visions led to his self-harming in order to be taken away to Japan, some kind of a haven after the