How Does Tim O Brien Use Ethos In The Things They Carried

Imagine one day you receive a mail from the government that you been draft to go a war at a different country. How would you feel if you know that purpose of this war is unreasonable in any senses? Angry, anxious or even confused. Vietnam War was “a personal failure on a national scale” (Hochgesang). There are many videos, documents and movies about the Vietnam War that show different angles of the Vietnam veterans’ experience and how the war really changes their life. In “The Things They Carried” written by Tim O’Brien, he argues about how the Vietnam War affect the soldiers in many ways, not only physically, but more important is the psychological effects before, during and after the war.

The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien begins by Mr. O'Brien describing his dramatical events that happened during the middle of his Vietnam experience while he was fighting in the war. Mr. O'Brien received his draft notice in the month of June in the year of 1968. When he received this notice Mr. O'Brien had feelings of confusion, and that drove him to go north to the Canadian border, and it had him contemplating if he wanted to cross it or not because he does not want to be forced to fight in a war he really does not believe in. However, Mr. O'Brien finally decides that he would feel guilty if he avoided the war and he also feared that his family would be disappointed. Not only does this novel tell us readers about his

On the Rainy River is the name of a chapter in Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried. O’Brien tells the story of one of his life experiences: how he almost ran from the Vietnam War and almost tried to escape to Canada. This story uses the first person as O’Brien recounts a personal story using “I.” He uses a lot of imagery, characterization, and even a bit of foreshadowing. However, the use of these devices help the story that he is telling to seem so much more true, so much more realistic. Imagery can be seen throughout the story, and it is apparent when O’Brien describes the people he is imagining.

The Things They Carried is a war story based on the Vietnam War. One story the author, Tim O 'Brien tells is the story of Mary Anne, Mark Fossie’s childhood sweetheart. Mary Anne’s curiosity allows her to acquire knowledge about Vietnam’s culture and language. She wants to learn about Vietnam, the war and what they do. She also isn’t afraid and is eager to aid the casualties. One night she goes out on an ambition with the Green Berets, and the next day she and Fossie become engaged. Eventually she disappears for 3 weeks only to arrive at the special forces hut, and when seen Mary Anne is wearing the same outfit as before, but with a necklace of human tongues around her neck. She says what happened isn’t bad. In the end, she crossed to the other side never coming back, becoming one with the land. Mary Anne symbolizes war soldiers going through the war getting consumed by the darkness of the war.

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses the art of fabricating stories as a coping mechanism. Trying to distinguish the difference between fictional and factual stories is a challenge in this book, but literal truth cannot capture the real violence that the soldiers dealt with in Vietnam, only “story truth” can. He explains, “If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made victim of a very old and terrible lie.” (O’Brien 65). The novel illustrates that storytelling is a way to keep the dead alive, even if it may not be a true story.

In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, Tim O’Brien explains the different events both he and his fellow comrades soldiers experienced in the Vietnam War. Tim retells the stories of his own traumatic events as well as stories he has heard from his friends. Some stories affect the soldiers greatly while other stories do not affect them as much. The character Norman Bowker from Tim O’Brien’s novel demonstrates the four main symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. Post traumatic stress disorder, also known as PTSD, “is a mental health condition that 's triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it” (“Post-traumatic stress disorder” Mayo Clinic). The four main symptoms of post

Memories and stories swarming the mind and twisted by imagination are the only glimpse of humanity a man can hold on to while at war. Through stories, men at war can share their thinning humanity with one another. The deafening silence of war defeats the human spirit and moral compass, thus it is not only man against man but man against sanity. Tim O 'Brien 's “The Things They Carried” provides a narrative of soldiers in the Vietnam War holding on to the only parts of themselves through their imagination. O’Brien employs symbolic tokens, heavy characterization, and the grueling conflict of man to illustrate how soldiers create metaphorical stories to ease the burden of war.

"The Things They Carried" list the variety of things his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company brought on their missions. Several of these things cannot be seen, including guilt and fear, while others are specific physical objects, including matches, morphine, M-16 rifles, and M&M's candy.

In Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried,” imagination is seen to be both beneficial and harmful. This novel consists of a story truth and a real truth. Tim O’Brien writes the book about the Vietnam War based primarily on his memory of the war. He does not remember every detail of the war, thus he makes up some false details to make the story seem more interesting. He does not only describe his own experiences, but also describe the experiences of other characters. He wants the readers to be able to feel and understand how he felt during the events of the story; he wants to provoke an emotional truth. O’Brien tries to prove that imagination is not completely a bad thing and that it is also a good thing. O’Brien starts to create stories about what could have happened in addition to the real war stories about himself and other characters’. With the power of imagination, O’Brien is able to talk about something that did not actually happen in his past. Imagination helps him escape reality and create a whole new life. Therefore, O’Brien uses imagination to do things that cannot be done in real life, to feel relieved, to confuse the readers on what is real and what is not, and to give the readers false belief.

“Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” Dante Alighieri. Hope is an anodyne. In times of war many soldiers require a buffer to alleviate the pain of witnessing the horrors of the war zone reality. This may manifest as emotional baggage, a reoccurring theme in “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. Emotional baggage transcends the physical weight it manifests that was in the soldier’s packs. Emotional baggage can manifest as something intangible, like an obsession, or take on physical weight and mass, like something that gives comfort simply by having it on one’s person. However, there comes a time when the emotional baggage must be shrugged off if one is to move forward and onward in one’s life. O’Brien uses the reoccurring theme emotional baggage in his novel “The Things They Carried” to show not only how some soldiers utilized it in an attempt to buffer themselves from the front line, but how some put faith in the symbolism of they carried, and how some come to the realization that they must shrug off some of this distracting emotional baggage if they were to carry on.

Imagine a novel or a movie that is about war that has not even one change in a character’s personality. Change is really important in many novels and movies for instance in Batman VS Superman: Dawn of Justice, the theme of change takes a huge role in the movie because by the end of the movie Batman and Superman unite after being against each other or in George Orwell’s allegory about the Russian Revolution “Animal Farm” the theme of change takes a huge role also because in the beginning the pigs order the animals in the farm to rebel against their bad farmer Mr. Jones and Humanity but by the end the pigs became friends with the humans as if no rebellion happened. The of change is really important for all the stories that are about fights or war. In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien the theme of change is one the most important themes and without it Tim O’Brien will not make a good point about war’s effect on people and if a person wants to join a war he or

In the story The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien didn’t mention anything about traditional war heroes. I think this was a great idea, because there are no traditional war heroes. A traditional war hero is someone who is fearless and someone who can’t be harmed mentally or emotionally. But in The Things They Carried the soldiers out on the front lines were emotionally and physically scarred. Tim O’Brien didn’t write about traditional war heroes, O’Brien wrote about normal people, people with different views on the Vietnam war, and how the war affected these people.

“At the girl’s throat was a necklace of human tongues. Elongated and narrow, like pieces of blackened leather, the tongues were threaded along a length of copper wire, one tongue overlapping the next, the tips curled upward as if caught in a final shrill syllable,” (O’Brien 105-106). This is an extreme example taken from Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, specifically from a story titled “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong.” A story of a once-naive civilian woman who, in the process of becoming a soldier in the traditional role of a man in combat, evolves into more than a mere soldier. Throughout history, many women were known to disguise themselves as men in combat. Now, they do not have to disguise themselves. The roles of women have dramatically changed in recent years. Women were not allowed to have an education. They did not attend high school or college, and they were expected to just be the typical housewife of the mid-1900’s. Some women had children while men were typical “bread-winners.” That is how the world was at that point in time. As you can see already, men and women were not equal in the minds of others. In the military, the differences between men and women are physical appearances. Women did not have the same muscle strength as men did; they certainly had strength, but could not run as fast as men in 50-80 pound gear, along with other things that could be a challenge. So why would they want to be a part of that? It is simple: equality. For some,

After the death of the Kiowa, the slim young man felt guilty because he played a role in the death of Kiowa. The soldier will always carry that guilt with him because he knows he was responsible and he knows he can never undo his action. Rat Kiley also struggled with his emotions after the death of his friend and took out his emotions on a buffalo. Kiley dealt with his emotions by shooting the buffalo and it made him feel better because he was able to get the emotions out of his body. These emotions can harm us or influence us, but we carry them with us at affect our daily decision making and

Stories can save people as in the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien short story Spin “ Rat Kiley made up a rhyme that caught on, and we'd all be chanting it together: Step out of line, hit a mine; follow the dink, you're in the pink. All around us, the place was littered with Bouncing Betties and Toe Poppers and booby-trapped artillery rounds, but in those five days on the Batangan Peninsula nobody got hurt. We all learned to love the old man. (Spin.8)”. The thing They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a novel with a series of short stories about his journey in Vietnam and he tell us that stories can bring people back from the dead by always telling their story.