Literary Devices In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

The exaggeration that O'Brien expresses in his story, also known as hyperbole, gives the reader a feeling of speaking with a man that just experienced the war of his life an hour before you two are speaking. The emotion is

When intrinsic motivation contrasts with a culture’s norm, the individual often feels unable to express their own beliefs. In Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, O’Brien recounts the time he was deployed to the Vietnam war to fight for the United States. As O’Brien reflects on his younger self “On Rainy River”, he reveals his old feelings of fear and resentment towards war. O’Brien uses daunting imagery to describe the scene,“I remember the rage in my stomach...I felt paralyzed. All around me the options seemed to be narrowing, as if I were hurtling down a huge black funnel, the whole world squeezing me tight...Moreover, I could not claim to be opposed to war as a matter of general principle” (O’Brien 40-41). The author uses somber

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

War zones are infamous for truly debilitating soldiers both mentally and physically. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the personal war experiences of the soldiers illustrate the diminution of the value and ability to retain morals in the Vietnam War. Morals always exist but they are obstructed due to the soldiers’ desire to tell a good war story. Tim O’Brien the character seems to find little importance in extracting morals from stories, and Tim O’Brien the author stresses on minute details, focusing on imagery and drama rather than dwelling on morality. Although the author and soldiers are constantly telling stories and being reminded that morals exist from Mitchell Sanders, they lose their ability to distinguish between moral

“The things they carried” was published around 1990 and the author was Tim O’Brien, he was also involved in the story as one of the main characters. He basically involved himself in the book, so he could imagine himself fighting and living the war days. How would you feel if you were involved in the Vietnam War away from home and surrounded with your enemies? Also having friends die next to you could be a difficult thing to go through, especially when you end up writing a letter to their family explaining that he/she won’t be able to come home this time because of a tragedy. Ask yourself this, “What would be going through your mind if you didn’t want to be part of the War, but yet your only other choice was to simply run away and start a new life?”

War is a time where soldiers lose themselves in the chaos that surrounds them. Soldiers have to immerse themselves in battle and always be ready for whatever comes their way. But when there is no conflict arising on the battlefield, soldiers have to reminisce on their pasts and think about their past experiences that shaped them into the person they have become. The Things They Carried is a memoir written by Tim O’Brien that takes place during the Vietnam War and talks about the experiences the soldiers of the war had experienced. O’Brien, the author of The Things They Carried, states that memories are experiences that blend over time into events to affect one’s emotions as they reminisce on events that happened in their life years ago.

When thinking about war, people do not usually think of the things that soldiers carry with them. However, the things the soldiers’ carry can help readers to better understand the reality of war. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brian, gives many examples of items which the soldiers bring along with them into war. Some people bring objects to remind them of something or give them hope, and others carry only emotional baggage, but everyone carries something with them. The Things They Carried shows readers the traumatizing effects of war and how people were able to cope with them using the things they carried.

The Vietnam War marked one of the most violent times in American history. The impact of the war affected soldiers long after the war and many of the soldiers remain traumatized from the incidents of the war today. These burdens that the soldiers carried remained largely unnoticed until the late 1990’s. “Stop the Sun” by Gary Paulsen and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O'Brien detail the effect that the war has on soldiers through realistic fiction. “The Things They Carried” shows the physical and psychological weight that the soldiers carry while fighting in a war. O’Brien uses figurative and literal language to portray the weight that the soldiers bear. For this reason, I prefer “The Things They Carried” by Tim O'Brien.

In The Things They Carried, minor characters play major roles in developing the plot and theme of the novel. The three minor characters that stand out are Elroy, Marry Anne Bell, and Kathleen. These characters may not be shown routinely in the novel, but the effect that they have on the environment and characters in the story are powerful. Having these minor characters interact with the major ones further develop the theme that Tim O’Brien is aiming for in this novel.

War changes everyone, and it can turn even the most innocent into warriors. Mary Anne Bell is whisked to Vietnam when her lover Mark Fossie arranges for her to do so. She becomes everyone’s favorite, and only, “cheerleader” for the medics and soldiers, but the war ends up changing her in ways that make the reader question the real effects of Vietnam. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien uses Mary Anne’s transformation to explore innocence in Vietnam.

The minor characters featured in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried are incredibly important to the plot of the overall novel. Because the novel features individual stories in a non-chronological order, the main character of a specific story might only be a minor character in the overall plot. However, these characters, although minor, are essential to the novel because O’Brien uses them to help convey several messages to his readers. Several of the characters are likely fictionalized. Their appearances in the novel are not meant to recount actual events but to symbolize a specific theme.

A true war story can have no moral. Neither side is a pure protagonist or antagonist. Both sides are anti-heroes; they are neither good nor evil because there are no principles in combat. War negatively impacts soldiers; it affects their emotions and sense of morality. Due to the immorality of conflict itself, there is no correct side or perspective. Tim O’Brien shows through his characters that wars have no right or wrong side because war itself has no moral. In the novel The Things They Carried, the author often uses his characters to depict how battle affects soldiers and how the complexity of warfare cause individual soldiers guilt and responsibility. The events affecting the characters Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, and Curt Lemon highlight

Finally the soldiers had the fear of not accomplishing goals that they had set for themselves or goals that were set for them by loved ones. The book says “I’ve had to live with it, feeling the shame, trying to push it away(O’Brien 39).” This quote helps explain how the author never wanted to go to war. He ended up disappointing himself and sticking toward his own goal of never going to war. Since he went to war he now has to live with the consequences. O’Brien thought of himself as a coward for going to war, but he only went to war because he did not want to be seen as a coward by

All in all, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien focuses on the internal struggles each soldier of O’Brien’s platoon battles either before, during, or after the war. In a collection of short stories, O’Brien is able to include a number of personal and meaningful experiences soldiers are willing to share which all of which includes the fight against the feelings of shame. The feelings of shame determine who the soldier becomes after the war and how they react to the past where the most horrendous and unimaginably experiences take place.

In, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien placed more emphasis on the intangible things than the tangible things because they symbolized what war was really like; There is meaning behind the objects they bring, but more significance to how the soldiers end up from the war from those intangible things. Each soldier was affected by the war emotionally and mentally, dealing with heavy loads of stress causing them to feel fear, hope, and grief. Emotions could be argued the most severe and problematic on the soldiers. Keeping a strong, able-bodied mentality added with perception and decision making was a struggle for many in the war because they were overtaken with fear for their lives as well as others. These intangible things explain and reveal