How Does O Brien Use Imagery In The Things They Carried

In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien uses many short stories to describe his experience in Vietnam. The story that captured many aspects of writing was “How to Tell a True War Story” because it acts as a guide to writing a true story. O’Brien uses many different rhetorical strategies, narrative techniques, and establishes a theme in this story to help develop his characters and story line.

On page 190-191, O’Brien states, “I turned mean inside...a deep coldness inside me...capable of evil...need for revenge kept eating at me.” His newfound hatred changes him into a different person than he was before the war, a person that seeked revenge. The anger and hatred O’Brien experiences gives off a resentful and bitter tone toward Jorgenson’s failure of being prepared to provide first aid to his wound.

Written by author Tim O’Brien after his own experience in Vietnam, “The Things They Carried” is a short story that introduces the reader to the experiences of soldiers away at war. O’Brien uses potent metaphors with a third person narrator to shape each character. In doing so, the reader is able to sympathize with the internal and external struggles the men endure. These symbolic comparisons often give even the smallest details great literary weight, due to their dual meanings. The symbolism in “The Things They Carried” guides the reader through the complex development of characters by establishing their humanity during the inhumane circumstance of war, articulating what the men need for emotional and spiritual survival, and by revealing

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.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he emphasizes a chapter on “The Man I Killed”, which describes the characteristics of a young Vietnamese man in which O’Brien may or may not have killed with a grenade. The novel is not chronologically sequenced, which leaves more room for the reader to engage in a critical thought process that fully bridges the author’s mind to their own. In O’Brien’s chapter, “The Man I Killed”, he attempts to humanize the enemy in a way that draws little separation between the enemy and himself by relating the enemy’s life prior to the war to his, and illustrates the war through the eyes of the soldiers who fought it.

The Vietnam War began in 1954, consisting of many extensive, horrific years of battle that seemed to create more harm to the United States and its soldiers rather than to North Vietnam. The 500,000 United States military personnel returned home with the loss of the war and the loss of their friends on their minds. Although the physical and emotional experiences that the men went through is unfathomable, Tim O’Brien does a great job portraying what life as a soldier was truly like in the Vietnam War. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien depicts the unstable emotional and psychological condition of the American soldiers through the symbolism of their belongings and personal anecdotes from their lives.

While the Vietnam War was a complex political pursuit that lasted only a few years, the impact of the war on millions of soldiers and civilians extended for many years beyond its termination. Soldiers killed or were killed; those who survived suffered from physical wounds or were plagued by PTSD from being wounded, watching their platoon mates die violently or dealing with the moral implications of their own violence on enemy fighters. Inspired by his experiences in the war, Tim O’Brien, a former soldier, wrote The Things They Carried, a collection of fictional and true war stories that embody the

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

O'Brien gives his characters lives outside the story and dedicates his fiction to their memory. In On the Rainy River, for example, O'Brien writes that he never really thanked the old man

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

Growing up, many young boys idolized the war heroes in movies such as Saving Private Ryan and American Sniper. However, the glorified heroism that is depicted in these films is far from the reality that is war. A more realistic rendition of war is seen in Tim O’Brien’s short story, The Things They Carried. Throughout the story, O’Brien uses metafictional characters to portray the physical and emotional burdens carried by American soldiers who were forced to conform to societal expectations upon being drafted for the Vietnam War. The literary elements O’Brien uses throughout the story to convey this theme are symbolism, imagery, tone, and inner conflict of the protagonist.

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried has within it many recurring themes, one of the most prominent of which is repetition. Throughout the book, repetition is used to convey a wide range of ideas and emotions, from the prominence of the soldiers' burdens in "The Things They Carried" to regret in "The Man I Killed." No matter its specific use, O’Brien’s use of repetition throughout the novel always conveys veterans’ ‘emotional truth’ of being unable to escape the war, both in Vietnam and at home.

Throughout 1964 to 1975 the Vietnam War was taking place on Korean soil in South Vietnam. Many young soldiers were called to serve during the war including Tim O’ Brien. In the story “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien illustrates realistic views by camouflages his past experiences of the combat to expose the immorality of the war and the life cycle of an American soldier during this era.

In “The Man I Killed”, O’Brien conveys his feelings without ever using the first person. He discontinues his role as the narrator. After O’Brien kills a man in My Khe, he falls into a trance-like state and begins to imagine the life of the man he just killed—a life that parallels his own. While his friends attempt to console him or comment on the dead man, O’Brien does not say a word. Ironically, his silence in this chapter is what conveys the most about his inner feelings of guilt and sorrow. Throughout the novel, many instances show how sensitive O’Brien truly is—his feelings about Martha, his shame following Ted Lavender’s death, and his reaction to the dead man in My Khe. What truly separates O’Brien from the others is shown by what follows

This passage was written under the chapter ‘How to Tell a True War Story’, which is itself an irony since we don’t know whether the story is completely true or not. The repetition of the word ‘nor’ gives a very negative feeling to the readers, and makes them feel that there are a set of rules that must be followed in war, and no exceptions should be made. In the sentence “A true war story is never a moral”, O’Brien uses firm and direct diction because he wants the readers to comprehend the moral that he is trying to convey in this passage, according to his experiences in war, that is ‘war is hell’.The syntax and structure varies throughout the passage. The first and last sentences are short and convey similar ideas, whereas the mid-portion of the passage is long so that the inconveniences of war can be listed clearly. This pattern has been effectively used by O’brien to highlight the message of the