The My First Combat Experience

“The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed” (O’Brien 68). In Tim O'Brien's’ novel, The Things They Carried, the author creates an overall reflection of war and the memories that come from the experiences. O’Brien describes his experiences in the Vietnam War and how the outcomes can lead to PTSD. Soldiers can not possibly capture these experiences in literal truth, but by storytelling. Tim kills an enemy and feels the guilt from it, so he makes up a backstory for

heard my voice"! And Captain John asked Captain Magee if he had an antenna phone and he did

The men who were in Tim O’Brien’s platoon caught on quickly, if they talked about everything that was going on as if it was only a story, their lives became a little easier. It became easier even for the men who didn’t practically like the guy who died. In the war it wasn’t about liking one another, that didn’t matter, what mattered to them was expressing their grief without showing it. “In any case, it’s easy to get sentimental about the dead, and to guard against it” (82). Being able to guard against their grief was something that was hard for many. No matter how many stories they told, there was still a sadness that some of them never could get over. The death of Kiowa was one of those impossible to get over. His death impacted everyone in the platoon. Even though Kiowa was just their guide, they treated him like he was a part of their family of misfits. Every man in the platoon had a story for Kiowa. There was some who told people stories that had Kiowa never dying, there were two however where his death left such a huge impact on them. All they

They try to build a new life, but memories from the war are still strongly obvious to them. Through the feeling of embarrassment inside the soldier, O’Brien has depicted the post-war effects of the

He describes, “I realize that in the important ways I haven’t changed at all. I was Timmy then; now I’m Tim...The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow” (223). “Timmy” was the narrator’s nickname as a kid in elementary school, implying his childhood innocence and naivety before he went to war. He described his life in three major stages: the first being “a little kid,” or Timmy, followed by his time in combat, in which he was often referred to as O’Brien, and then his current life as “a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow,” also known as Tim. While there were transitions in his life that took place between these stages, he chose to focus on the three most prominent of those phases; the exposition as a child, the climax as a soldier, and the resolution as a middle-aged author writing about his experiences in the war. When he was first drafted, he expected to change in a major way during the time that he served, but while he looked back with a writer’s point of view, he discovers that he is still the same person that he was before the war itself. This was utterly disappointing to the protagonist, who thought he was a changed man. If nothing is gained or lost from an experience, there is no point and no value in said event occurring in the first

"It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. When you’re afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood- you give it together, you take it together." Serving in the Vietnam war was never easy for Tim O 'Brien, he had some very interesting things that happened to him.

By the time the military had its own aircraft in the sky, the intruders were already gone. This told the commanders that they were under strong surveillance by a presence that could only be hostile.

These works share their messages through their main characters, Boy and Joe, respectively. The characters are similar in the way that they did not sign up for their wars, but are different in the sense that they experience different kinds of loss, and they had different amounts of knowledge of their conflicts. However, these differences do not take away from the shared theme. In fact, it makes it stronger. The differences show the terrible effects of war on everybody, whether they are in the war, outside of it, a solider or a civilian, young or old. Both Joe and Boy were intended to be universal characters, and to an extent they are, but together they truly show the disastrous impacts of war like no single character or story ever

I had heard enough for the day. I silently prayed that Aunt Joyce, Trudy, and the boys would be back soon. I knew that I needed to get my plan together about Levi coming over. It was

Imagine trying to find your family member in a sea of people all dressed the same with the same haircut. Chaotic to say the least. After searching for what seemed like an eternity, I had found him, we gave each other a big hug and then realized that in my search for him I had somehow lost our parents. We then fought our way back through the crowds to find them. He seemed very happy to be back, big smile on his face, joking around and telling stories. Maybe because at Lejeune, this time instead of a bouncy castle they had a table of beer. Any grown person would probably agree that this was a much better option. I’m sure my brother had gone through the same things over in Afghanistan as the Marines in this book did as well, we just didn’t talk about

Tim O’Brien tells the story of him and his platoon in Vietnam as well as a little about what each had experienced before and after the war. He tells each story in different way to elaborate on different things that happened around the same time. This complicated method emphasizes how he and each of his platoon member felt together while in Nam.It may jump from tale to tale in the stroy, but it has a clear message. In the story The Things They Carried O’Brien explains in different ways about being away from home can cause dramatic changes to someone in an alienating or a beneficial way.

in to look for survivors, the building collapsed. McLoughlin (Cage) was able to save 1 man, 2 were killed

Everybody remembers getting their very first car and discovering the limits they could push with their car. Well, my first car was not anything special, just a bright red 2008 Chevy Aveo5 Hatchback, which had a little less than eighty-thousand miles on it and was a manual transmission. This type of vehicle was far from being considered fast, but at least it was enjoyable to drive due to it being a stick shift. One of the worst habits an experienced driver can acquire is speeding, which I used to experiment to see the maximum speed I could reach with my small red car. Consequently, this mindset would all change after I endured the very first car crash of my life in April, 2016.

These young soldiers are usually in their late teens and early twenties. For the first few weeks or months they talk of their girlfriends and the going-ons back home. The stories are all the same, “When I get home I am going to marry her and we will run our own business.” Correspondence with the outside world is very important to each of the characters. Hearing about their hometowns often gives the men a feeling that there is something worth fighting for. An example of this type of correspondence comes from Corporal Michael Alan McAninch:

Throughout this paper I will be writing about my life, starting from my very first memory and ending with my life as it is now. Since I was brought into this world I had an older sister who is two and a half years older than I am. My parents said right away that my sister was so excited to have me in her life that she did not care that she was no longer the center of my parent’s attention. She acted as if I was her baby. When I was just starting out, as a toddler was the time that I started to develop my first memories, which are not all good. Lets start from the beginning, my first memory that I have of myself would be from when I was almost two years old. In this memory I was attending my papas funeral. I remember that there was the colour red everywhere, all over the walls and even on the seats. It was his favourite colour according to what my parents tell me. From this memory I also remember my parents walking me up to him during his wake and allowing my older sister and I to put a photo of us into his shirt pocket so we would always be with him. After this memory, my next one occurs when I am around the age of two as well. I remember being in my families first home sitting in our kitchen with my mom, on her lap wrapped in my little mermaid blanket, drinking a little bit of tea with her while we watched my older sister catch the bus to go to school. This is still one of my favourite memories because I truly fell that this helped shaped the person I am today. I also