How Does Tim O Brien Use Literary Devices

This helped us see that the narrator thought the war was traumatizing. To begin, O’brien used the literary device, Man vs. Self, to relay that war is a traumatizing experience. One thing he said that shows this is, “when I’m reading a newspaper or just sitting or just sitting alone in a room I’ll look up and see the young man coming out of the morning fog.” He is trying to cope with it everyday that he had to kill a man that had done no harm to him. He sees the young man walking past him often as constant reminder.

In the middle of the poem, the speaker arrives at the number of casualties from the war. When he reads this number he can’t believe that he is still alive. As he reads down the names he uses the visual imagery and simile to describe how he expected to find his own name in “letters like smoke” (line 16). This helps the reader understand how lucky the speaker felt about somehow escaping the war still alive. As he goes

“At night I’d go home smelling of pig. It wouldn’t go away. Even after a hot bath, scrubbing hard, the stink was always there – like old bacon, or sausage, a greasy pig-stink that soaked deep into my skin and hair. Among other things, I remember, it was tough getting dates that summer. I felt isolated; I spent a lot of time alone.” (O’Brien, 41).

The author was giving a message then at the end of the poem it changes. He was giving the message that war happens to everybody and that they will have to go to war at some point in there life. The problem is that they don’t know the bourdon that it puts on the people that he has supported and been supported by until his son is sent of. He gets a totally different feeling when he doesn’t know what could happen to his son. He gets his message across by proving that every body has something to do with war wether they like it or not. Your parents might have been to war, if not them then your uncles, cousins, friends, or your neighbors(old men). Then if it isn’t them it could be your child who is going and the feeling is different, you lose the feeling of security when you cant protect your child. He

"they’re picking them up, those they can find, and bringing them home, they’re bringing them in, piled on the hulls of Grants, in trucks, in convoys, they’re zipping them up in green plastic bags, . . . they are bringing them home." The use of repetition, and the poem’s rhythmic style, we are given the impression of an endless conveyor belt. This quote also gives us meaning; that war is almost like a business, manufacturing soldiers and sending them home. "curly-heads, kinky-hairs, crew-cuts, balding non-coms" Imagery is used in this quote to show that war is indiscriminate, war does not care for race, religion, background etc. "in their sterile housing they tilt towards these like skiers– taxiing in, on the long runways" Metaphor is used to show the dead soldiers moving about in their coffins before landing on the runway, this quote also gives the reader a realisation of the reality of

The narrator goes on to talk about how wisely he proceeded when stalking the old man, “it took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him in his bed” (par 3).The amount of caution and patience he practiced during this

Taking place in the middle of the Cold War Era, the Vietnam War was a war not only over land but for many a battle to protect democracy and to fight communism. Much like any other account of a war, the details are gruesome and it is even more difficult to imagine. However, following the Vietnam War one author, who served in the war, decided to take up the task and make an historic account of one of them most grueling wars ever fought. Tim O’Brien is a Vietnam veteran who wrote the novel The Things They Carried. There is a fine line to be walked when writing the accounts of the war in a way that not only informs but also entertains; however, Tim O’Brien walks it successfully. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried,

After being in these conditions for so long, the only thing that they want is to get out as quickly as possible. Tim O’ Brien’s opinion towards war is also shown through this passage. It shows how tired of the war he and his company were.

6. “Even while he was speaking to O’Brien, when the meaning of the words had sunk in, a chilly shuddering feeling had taken possession of his body. He had the sensation of stepping into the dampness of a grave.”

The man exhibits quite a bit of self-reliance and pride similar to McCandless. The man seems to do everything he can to make his journey successful, but he failed before his adventure began. No one really knows how dangerous nature can be until one has experience a near death experience. The man regrets not listening to the old-timer, thinking: “All this the man knew. The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had told him about it the previous fall, and now he was appreciating the advice.

may also be symbolized through the intense beating of the old man’s heart. The narrator says, “It was the beating of

Another way O’Brien weaves a new story to portray emotional “truth” is by inserting “lies,” or events that may have not happen. O’Brien states “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t, because the normal stuff is necessary to believe the truly incredible craziness” (71); this is displayed when Rat Kiley tells the story of Mary Anne and Mitchell Sanders replies with “all that had to be there for a reason. That’s how stories work” (O’Brien 102) when explaining how he knew she was with the Green Berets. Rat Kiley provided basic background information on the Green Berets, such as there were six of them who had their own area and occasionally vanished for a couple days (O’Brien 92). While none of that may be the “happening-truth” - or maybe all of it may be the happening “truth” - it doesn’t really matter. O’Brien implies that the information is not the “happening-true” only to imply the real “truth”, the “story-truth”; Mary Anne’s story was weaved with fiction in order for the readers to understand the “story-truth.” She was there to display how war affected the soldiers: “What happened to her… was what happened to all of them. You come over clean and you get dirty and then afterwards it’s never the same” (O’Brien 114). The juxtaposition of her young feminine innocence in the beginning and in the end with her disappearance was a stronger story than stating the war broke the minds of men. O’Brien weaves his story to depict the “story-truth.” In addition, readers

His front faced the people and between the two, a small crate he owned holding something special, but his back faced a frozen fountain, were one slip would mean an icy grave. Balancing himself on the fountain’s stone rim, he would carefully walk from one point to another and then back again, all without fumbling a single line of dialogue. His shoes made a satisfying click, and these clicks sync with his talking, like a music beat. The words he said gave interest to the audience, “And with the power of Creation, God created the stars and planets. God then put time and care into crafting one particular place, Earth, the home to us all.”

This is when the poem switches from describing the setting to describing the one of the characters a dying soldiers. "And floundring like a man fire or lime" "As under a green sea, I saw him drowning" gives us a view of what they see using this simile as the one soldier dies very painfully not quick but its slowly. The narrator says that "In all my dreams, before my helpless sight" to let the reader know that he relives this moment over and over and is haunted by the sight. The gas weapon in the story is a very unique way that the soldiers can die and its not the typical way most people would think a soldier would die. Most peole think that death would be most common in battle with the enemy in a fire fight with bullets. The author does this on purpose to emphasize his theme, that it's not what most people believe about war.

From the start of the excerpt, Ellison implements imagery to emphasise the seriousness of the situation, while also using imagery to implements comedic relief to offset the gravity of the predicament between the narrator and the “Old man.” From the first sentence of the excerpt, we can infer that the “Old man” has threatened to kill the narrator and is thinking intently on following through with his threat by the use of the narrator description of the world be murder weapon. Ellison employs the use of imagery to describe the weapon the “Old man” was looking toward. The narrator describes it as a”twisted” iron bar. Ellison could have just wrote “iron bar” and been done with it, but the added adjective to describe the iron bar goes to create added suspense and intensifies the gravity of the situation because an object that is twisted can do much more damage than if it was not twisted. Ellison also uses imagery to