The Man He Killed Persuasive Essay

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.

“My conscience told me to run, but some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing me toward the war. What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid shame. I did not want people to think badly of me” (O’Brien 33). This reinforces the main theme of shame and guilt, because it shows how even though O’Brien wanted nothing more than to run away and never come back, he couldn’t get over the extreme amount of guilt he had for feeling that way.

O’Brien always questioned the idea of “enemies”. Throughout the book he questioned in many ways and asked why were they enemies. What have they done to make them enemies, he sought for answers to his questions and eventually justified them by “if I don't kill them then they will kill me”.He was afraid of both killing, and dying but he knew that if he didn’t kill then he himself would be dead. These experiences and suppression of ideas are what led O’Brien’s to write The Things They Carried. In real life, Tim O'Brien feared the war and wrote this book to persuade others and to plant an idea in their head about the horrors that they should not want to suffer. Tim portrays his fear of the war by sharing his experiences as stories. Tim portrays many of his fears

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.

“If I truly believe the war is wrong, is it then also wrong to go off and kill people? If I do that, what will happen to my soul?” (pg 60). Tim O 'Brien is an American man who was drafted into the Vietnam War. O 'Brien is not a violent man and struggles because he believes that the war is wrong. He debates whether or not he should go to war or move to Canada to avoid the draft. Tim O 'Brien decides to join the army. O 'Brien uses his personal experiences as a foot soldier in the Vietnam War to convey his possible bias perspective that the Vietnam War was a waste of people 's lives and a shameful venture for the United States.

20) O’Brien tells how these young men were drafted which were constantly in fear, they wished to be there obliviously but war takes up all of one’s attention; it played a big role in their life, changing their tactics, personality and becoming a new person. O’Brien uses this to show the stressful moments in war where one has pressure to be alive and in this case to fit in with everyone else and feel part of something, in a lonely place such as the war.

Tim O'Brien is confused about the Vietnam War. He is getting drafted into it, but is also protesting it. He gets to boot camp and finds it very difficult to know that he is going off to a country far away from home and fighting a war that he didn't believe was morally right. Before O'Brien gets to Vietnam he visits a military Chaplin about his problem with the war. "O'Brien I am really surprised to hear this. You're a good kid but you are betraying you country when you say these things"(60). This says a lot about O'Brien's views on the Vietnam War. In the reading of the book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien explains his struggles in boot camp

The words “hot” (27)  and “pitiful” (67) express his attitude about this decision. Shame makes one feel “hot” (27) on the inside, illustrating the heat of embarrassment or burning torment that cannot be shaken. “[P]itiful” (67) exposes O’Brien’s fears, the reasons why he didn’t go. He was afraid of facing reproach for fleeing, so to avoid shame, he went to war. The reader shares the sensations of fear and contempt with the character, and this choice of diction sets forth the shameful tone.  O’Brien’s choice of words when explaining his reasoning for accepting his duty helps to emphasize his overall attitude toward his

To add on, O’Brien lacks the knowledge and skill to help others, making him egocentric. It is sensible to state this due to his inability to be selfless and rid his mind of vain thoughts. O’Brien strongly believes that he “was too good for [the] war, he was too smart, too compassionate, too everything” (41). This hyperbole, an exaggeration, exhibits that O’Brien only thinks of himself and does not want to go to war because it does not benefit his future at all. He is unable to understand the nation’s need for his presence in Vietnam due to his uncontrollable anger which blinds him from an opportunity to help those who are hurting and are in need of help from people such as him. Additionally, his anger also resonates from his envious thoughts, which is caused by what he suggests is an unjust government.

After being released from the hospital, O’Brien reminisces about his relationships with the other soldiers in the war. He realizes how much he misses being in real danger when he was in Vietnam. O’Briens experience in the war caused him and the other soldiers to see the world more clearly and appreciate the people surrounding you more than in a normal situation. O’Brien states, “You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood-you give it together, you take it together” (O’Brien 183). O’Brien does not feel that the word friendship can accurately describe the relationship between the men. He feels more compassionate about his fellow soldiers then a friend would, therefore he considers the other soldiers as brothers. The soldiers’ brotherly love is expressed through their selflessness in shedding blood but also protecting each other by taking the enemies blood as well. The quotations proves the novel is a love story because O’Brien shares his love with the other soldiers by treating them like brothers and as part of a tribe. Hence, the novel represents a love story of a brotherhood because of the soldiers’ sacrifices and understanding of one another while in

While memories can hurt, they build people into who they are today. The book The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, is written in a non-linear format. The nonlinear format mimics one’s memories. O’Brien waits 20 years to begin writing this book because it took time to process what he has gone through. O’Brien shares many short stories about other in his group and the situations they faced during the Vietnam War.

He knows that being willing to die so that he will not be embarrassed does not make him brave. He also wishes he could be truly brave and stand up for what he believes in--truly believing that Vietnam is wrong--but something holds him back. Knowing it is fear and shame. O’Brien does not want to be called a coward, so he goes to war. Even years later, he sees this as pathetic. But despite the grievances of the war, each fellow comrade and friend of his, had their own interpretation of right and wrong whether or not that agrees with our personal “morals”, today (times have obviously greatly changed). As individuals, it agreed with them during their time of service and more specifically, in combat. This is vital to the development of the story as a whole because each and every one of them provides a struggle between war, circumstances and reality. Ultimately, The Things They Carried suggests that, in war, the conventions of good and evil in civilized society fall by the wayside. After Rat Kiley loses his best friend, Curt Lemon, to a booby trap he tortures a baby water buffalo as everyone else looks on. No one tries to stop it. Mitchell Sanders says that in Vietnam there are new sins created that have never existed before. War re-defines morality, it changes the definition. Even the purpose of being there is lost on the soldiers when they are down

The narrator in “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy is a soldier that killed someone and the narrator in “The Things They Carried” is Tim O’ Brien who writes about his own experiences in Vietnam. I like Tim O’ Brien’s writing because it reminds me of movies like “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket”. I love movies like those and as I read “The Things they carried” my head flows with war movies and I imagine the book is a war movie in its self. On the other hand I am not a fan of Thomas Hardy “The Man He killed”. I personally believe the poem is weak and it doesn’t seem like there is any effort into it. I do give him credit because I don’t know if I could manage to have something as simple as pointing and shooting someone into five stanzas. Death on the other hand has different effects on people.

Upon Google searching (2017), “define manslaughter”, one will discover that is is “the crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought, or otherwise in circumstances not amounting to murder.” In other words, manslaughter is the unintentional act of killing a human being. After Google searching (2017), “define murder”, it is evident that it is “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.” Alternatively, it means one human being plans to kill another human being and does it. Is taking a person’s life due to driving under the influence an intention or unintentional wrongdoing? Some may attest that the intoxicated driver did not conspire to kill someone, therefore, it is manslaughter. Others may inquire that the

How maybe he was a scholar and maybe his parents were farmers.  Then O'Brien goes on to talk of maybe why this young man was in the army, and maybe why he was fighting;  these are something’s that are taught in the schools.  O'Brien states that the man may have joined because he was struggling for independence, juts like all the people that were fighting with him.  Maybe this man had been taught from the beginning that to defend the land was a mans highest duty and privilege.  Then on the other hand maybe he was not a good fighter, and maybe in poor health but had been told to fight and could not ask any questions.  These reasons are all reasons that are taught in textbooks; they go along with the idea of the draft.  Some people go fight because they want to and others go because they are told they have to. How do you tell these people apart in the heat of battle or when they are dead?  The way that O'Brien starts to describe the young man as someone who was small and frail, and maybe had plans for a bright future puts sorrow in the readers heart, in that all his plans can not happen for him or maybe the family that is longing for his return.  It also shows the regret that maybe going on in the killers’ mind.  For O'Brien to be writing on how this young mans life has come to a sudden end and his plans for the future is over is intriguing.  Then to add to that he had the story written through the eyes of the soldier that ended this young mans life.  The