Imagery In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Mary Anne adjusted to the life in Vietnam, as did the soldiers that were there, and as time progressed she began to enjoy or get a thrill out of being in Vietnam. "I mean when we first got here-all of us- we were real young and innocent, full of romantic bullshit, but we learned pretty damn quick. And so did Mary Anne,"(97). The learning curve in war is quickened by the fact that it is a matter of life or death when you are working in a war, and it did not matter who you were the you quickly learned how to operate in a battle field. Mary Anne did not fit in a first and did not know or understand her role in the war, and just like the fresh soldiers coming from America did know or understand their role in the war. As the soldiers, as well as Mary Anne, begin to realize the realities of the war they move their focus away from their homes in America and begin to focus on the work that needed to be accomplished in Vietnam. The physical changes that occur to Mary Anne as she begins to be assimilated into the Vietnam War are like night and day. She came as your typical American girl, but then becomes a fighting soldier looking and anticipating ugly war

The portrayal of the Vietnam war in Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried, is significantly influenced by the female character Martha. Although her parts in the book were meager in comparison to the men's, O'Brien's beautifully crafted work wouldn't have been complete without the themes of love and separation, danger and focus, and the tension between reality and fantasy, of which she presented. Consequently, Martha’s contribution is powerful even in the shadow of the other

A second significant theme that O’Brian presents in The Things They Carried is guilt, the emotions that hung over the soldiers after tragedies occurred. O’Brien develops this theme in the novel through Imagery and symbolism. The first example of guilt is presented in the chapter title “The Things They Carried.” After Ted Lavender was shot in the head during their mission, the author shows the guilt that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was feeling through the use of Imagery. O’Brien write, “ On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha’s letters. Then he burned the two photographs. There was steady rain falling, which made it difficult, but he used heat tabs and Sterno to

Mary Ann, the cute blond with the cosmetic bag and pink sexy sweater portrays the perfect picture of a high school sweetheart of the seventies. She is being imported "with the daily resupply shipment" and presented as an object of the men's enjoyment. "The men genuinely liked her" means they liked what they saw, her body. But this image of Mary

Mary Anne's curiosity provoked her change. You see this from the way she is described. If it wasn't for her avid nature to learn more about her surroundings she may have stayed the same. She wanted to know everything about Vietnam, she didn't just want to sit back and watch. She wanted to be in the action. "Though she was young, Rat said Mary Anne Bell was no timid child. She was curious about things…asking questions…. listen quietly while someone would fill her in. She had a good quick mind."(95) She was enthralled by her surroundings she wanted to do and know everything, she was in a new place ready and willing to learn unlike the soldiers who were there only because they had too. The speaker shows us this in this quote. "They carried the soldiers greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing…it was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive…they kept humping. They did not submit to the obvious alternative to fall."(21) This quote is to inform the reader that the only reason a solider would go to war and to stay there is from the "fear of blushing" That they weren't there by choice. The term "humping" is used. It is there way of dealing with the war. They just have to keep on ‘humping" and everything would be all right. It was there way

“Tim O’Brien is obsessed with telling a true war story. O 'Brien 's fiction about the Vietnam experience suggest, lies not in realistic depictions or definitive accounts. As O’Brien argues, absolute occurrence is irrelevant because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Mary Ann’s induction into genuine experience is clearly destructive as well as empowering” (p.12) Tim O’s text, The Things they Carried, details his uses of word choice to portray his tone and bias. Tim O’Brien uses Martha to represents the idea of home and all it attendant images. He also uses letters and quotes to convey his image. Despite the fact that women assume a little part in The Things They Carried, it is a critical one. The Female characters Martha, Mary Anne Bell, and Kathleen Cross all affect the lives of the soldiers . Tim O’Brien uses the female role to portray his view and thoughts on his true war story which depict the lack of morality.

Mary Anne, upon returning from a three week mission with the Greenies, is found by Fossie singing in the Greenies’ hootch. This Mary Anne, however, was different from the Mary Anne he had known and fallen in love with. She had changed. Rat, describing the story, said, “There was no emotion in her stare, no sense of the person behind it. But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry. At the girl’s throat was a necklace of human tongues”(105). This symbol, the tongue necklace, shows the change in Mary Anne’s demeanor from sweet and innocent to ruthless and frigid. She became an empty husk of who she was before. The necklace served as a trophy, the winnings from her kills, like a deer head mounted above a hunter’s fireplace. The old Mary Anne

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried places readers in the shoes of soldiers such as Jimmy Cross, Kiowa or Rat Kiley in order to offer readers a better understanding of what American soldiers faced during the Vietnam War. By recreating the atmosphere of the Vietnam War time period accurately, O’brien had the freedom of adding realistic, but truly fictional elements to make his story more life-like. While none of the soldiers in this story are real individuals, his use of character’s point of view and their stream of consciousness helps to present their emotions and reactions in a very accurate way. Tim O'Brien employs the literary elements of perspective and syntactical expression to bring readers into a very realistic, yet fictional parallel

Her clothing transitions from the typical American sweetheart to that similar of a man. Mary Anne, however, was far more than a man--“She was part of the land. She was wearing her culottes, her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues. She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill” (O’Brien 82).

When Mary Anne first arrives she is wearing white culottes and a pink sweater, as a typical tennager would in the 1960’s. Throughout the chapter, you witness this typical teenager change into a barbaric esque soldier. She cuts her hair short,

The Vietnam War was the long costly war that took the lives of thousands of United States military. Many soldiers witnessed many casualties take place causing them to undergo a sense of guilt as many of their fellow soldiers and innocent Vietnamese civilians were killed during this bloody war. In the war story The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien uses a replete amount of very powerful imagery as he served as an infantryman in the Vietnam War and witnessed plenty of deaths during war and experienced a variety of different emotions. O’Brien makes the reader understand that someone can take a real life experience, like Lieutenant Cross with Martha, and use his imagination to help the audience better interpret the emotional weight he was feeling

Another character who changed dramatically from the war is Mary Anne Bell. Mary Anne was the high school sweetheart of Mark Fossie. Mary Anne arrived a sweet, super feminine, and was full of innocence. O’Brien said that when she first arrive Mary Anne and Mark would play around like children. After a while Mary Anne starts to be more like the rest of the solider in the Alpha Company.

As Mary Anne spends more time in Vietnam, she begins to lose her innocent quirks. Her boyfriend, Fossie, realizes this and feels the change around him: “Her body seemed foreign somehow-too stiff in places, too firm where the softness used to be. The bubbliness was gone. The nervous giggling too (95).” As Fossie considers Mary Anne’s changes, he is unnerved by her lack of “bubbliness” and “softness.” Both of these terms describe innocence in youth, as bubbly and soft personalities are untouched by harsh realities. When the reader learns that Mary Anne is losing the happy parts of her personality, O’Brien is indicating that Vietnam slowly kills the good in people. With these subtle but noticeable changes, he is showing a shift in personality that comes with being in a warzone. O’Brien also emphasizes a change in Mary Anne’s innocence when he considers her laughter. He details that Mary Anne rarely laughed, and it was only when something was very funny to her (95). Laughter is another marker of innocence, and by stating that Mary Anne is no longer laughing as much, the reader learns that she is no longer as innocent. Mary Anne does not express joy as often, and she instead is becoming more and more aware of Vietnam. She is showing signs of loss of innocence, expressing how Vietnam can take away

First, she cuts her hair short and puts in a bandana, stops wearing makeup and jewelry, and ceases to worry about personal hygiene. Then, Mark catches her on an ambush with a team of Green Berets and yells at her. He no longer recognizes her in her “bush hat and filthy green fatigues; she carried the standard M-16 automatic assault rifle; her face was black with charcoal” (98). In two weeks she has gone from someone with complexion as sweet as a strawberry and skin that was even untouched by the sun to a soldier that lays in the dirt holding a weapon to end someone's life, ignoring her innocence and covering it up with a black charcoal alter ego. After he yells at her, she leaves with the Green Berets for three weeks (94). This decision to leave is the final leap towards a new Mary Anne, as she has now decided that fighting with the Green Berets is more important to her than staying with the man she was engaged to marry. She returns once more, this time with “glowing jungle green” eyes instead of blue, symbolizing her complete entrance into war (101). She is now one with the green mountains of Vietnam. She has now decided that the war is more important than getting married, starting a family, or even going home. This decision was made time and time again by millions of young men who had gone to Vietnam as a consequence of having their birth on the wrong day. Only a few of these men exited Vietnam as the same person that

But Mark said it was a bad idea and way to dangerous but Mary didn’t give up. She couldn’t understand what was so bad about it she said “They are human beings to” (92). Finally they went to the village and she showed no fear. She felt comfortable and didn’t even care about what all Mark told her could happen and what does happen. She was fascinated by the adrenaline buzz that went with the job. She learned quick and never backed off from the ugly cases. Mark was proud but also amazed, he believed she was a different person. She changed a lot over the time and she would disappear throughout the nights and Mark would wonder and finally he would get mad and set her down and to talk about it. She started to wear her old clothes and they seemed happy, along with a unsteadiness in there relationship that everyone could see. By the end of this story Mary was a completely different person and she was