Corrupted Morals
The Things They Carried, a novel written by Tim O’Brien leads the readers to believe that a soldier’s imagination is a double-edged sword, both harmful and beneficial. This captivating story takes place during the Vietnam War. Through the story's narrator, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, readers get a feel for what the soldiers at that time had to endure. The book speaks of the mental and physical changes that happen to soldiers as days turn into months and months into years. Although the story occurs in Vietnam during the 1960s and early 1970s, its relevance is still apparent today with the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, the Department of Veteran Affairs stated that between 1990 and 2007 nearly 74,000 Americans died during
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That is approximately ten thousand more than the 58,195 casualties reported during the Vietnam War. The Gulf War and the Vietnam War have much in common. Many believe that both wars were politically motivated and the trauma, both emotionally and physically that soldiers endured was in a sense, worthless. The real conflict in O’Brien’s story is the one that exists within each soldier. This story not only reflects the author’s way of blending fiction with autobiographical facts, but it also gives readers a glimpse of how the soldiers within a small military unit work together. O’Brien states in his book, “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. That baggage consists of grief, terror, love, longing – these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had a tangible weight.” (O’Brien) This literary work goes on to tell the reader of all the tangible things the soldiers carried along with the intangible emotional baggage carried by each soldier. The theme of this story demonstrates that there is more to the war than fighting. War is hell, and its morals are corrupt. Some soldiers return from their deployments, and their lives and moral fabric …show more content…
They are woven tightly and interlocked throughout the fibers of the story. The author appears to be making a continued point that war affects soldiers in uncomplimentary ways. If you pick up any war story and it does not question the issue of morality to some extent, it is “fake news.” In war book after war book, and story after story the theme of questionable morals is woven tightly throughout them. Many times the reader must “read between the lines,” but it is there. The question of morality is seen again with the analysis of a contemporary novel, American Sniper, its author, Chris Kyle does not beat around the bush. His writing style is simplistic and blunt, similar to O'Brien's style in The Things They Carried. Kyle has one hundred and sixty documented kills during his four tours of duty in Iraq while a member of SEAL Team 3. In this book, Kyle carries all the emotional baggage that the soldiers in the story, The Things They Carried did, and then some. In fact, the Iraqis placed an $80,000 bounty on his head because he was that deadly. Chris Kyle had PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) a term now used to define the toll the emotional, and psychological baggage takes on a soldier. (Kyle) It is a contemporary term and was not “coined” during the Vietnam War. This literary work mirrors the themes seen throughout, The Things They Carried. From the beginning the
In the fictional novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien vividly explains the fear and trauma the soldiers encountered during the Vietnam War. Many of these soldiers are very young and inexperienced. They begin to witness their acquaintances’ tragic demise, and kill other innocent lives on their own. Many people have a background knowledge on the basis of what soldiers face each day, but they don’t have a clear understanding of what goes through these individual’s minds when they’re at war. O’Brien gives descriptive details on the soldiers’ true character by appealing to emotions, using antithesis and imagery.
They carry many things, they carry a massive amount of weight on their shoulders. However, the heaviest thing that they carry cannot be touched. The intangible weight of fear, loss, anger, and guilt far outweigh any tangible item that they could possibly possess. The Thing They Carried is not only an eye-opening collection of war stories, but it is also a love story, a memoir, and a tribute to the unimaginable things that happen to our soldiers in war zones. War changes men, makes them different, and when they come home they are not the same person and they often have trouble readjusting to the life of a civilian.
The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War that the author, Tim O’Brien, uses to convey his experiences and feelings about the war. The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O’Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. To O’Brien the novel is not only a compilation of stories, but also a release of the fears, sadness, and anger that he has felt because of the Vietnam War.
“The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’Brien is a novel whose theme is not only related to soldiers but to everyday people as well. The theme of this novel lies in the struggles that soldiers bear, both physically and emotionally. The title —The Things They Carried— and most of
The Vietnam War began in 1954, consisting of many extensive, horrific years of battle that seemed to create more harm to the United States and its soldiers rather than to North Vietnam. The 500,000 United States military personnel returned home with the loss of the war and the loss of their friends on their minds. Although the physical and emotional experiences that the men went through is unfathomable, Tim O’Brien does a great job portraying what life as a soldier was truly like in the Vietnam War. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien depicts the unstable emotional and psychological condition of the American soldiers through the symbolism of their belongings and personal anecdotes from their lives.
For countless of people today, the Vietnam war is just something from the past, but for Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam War will endlessly be with him. This one year in Vietnam changes the lives of this platoon from emotional pain, physical pain, as well as muscle pain will commence to cloud their vision. The weight of the things that they carried takes great effect on them that they have to continue to endure on this one year trip in Vietnam and remember these memories for the rest of their lives..
The text, The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war
While the Vietnam War was a complex political pursuit that lasted only a few years, the impact of the war on millions of soldiers and civilians extended for many years beyond its termination. Soldiers killed or were killed; those who survived suffered from physical wounds or were plagued by PTSD from being wounded, watching their platoon mates die violently or dealing with the moral implications of their own violence on enemy fighters. Inspired by his experiences in the war, Tim O’Brien, a former soldier, wrote The Things They Carried, a collection of fictional and true war stories that embody the
Memories and stories swarming the mind and twisted by imagination are the only glimpse of humanity a man can hold on to while at war. Through stories, men at war can share their thinning humanity with one another. The deafening silence of war defeats the human spirit and moral compass, thus it is not only man against man but man against sanity. Tim O 'Brien 's “The Things They Carried” provides a narrative of soldiers in the Vietnam War holding on to the only parts of themselves through their imagination. O’Brien employs symbolic tokens, heavy characterization, and the grueling conflict of man to illustrate how soldiers create metaphorical stories to ease the burden of war.
Unlike most war stories, in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” the war in Vietnam is not glorified and instead, the story is believable and raw. The horrors of war that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his squadron experience in an unfiltered, yet emotionally detached way that molds the structure and the language. This story, through its structure and techniques, displays the idea of how disillusionment and loss of innocence create unimaginable burdens for the American soldiers. O’Brien portrays the characters’ burdens with a monotonous and lulling tone through the use of flashbacks, setting, imagery, and metonymy.
Tim O’Brien brings the characters and stories to life in The Things They Carried. He uses a writing style that brings stories to life by posing questions between the relationship of reality and fiction (Calloway 249). This is called metafiction and it exposes the truth through the literary experience. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction to make the characters and stories in The Things They Carried realistically evocative of the Vietnam War.
The novel, The Things They Carried is a story of one man’s accounts resulting to his tour of duty in Vietnam. Many of the men that are discussed in the book continued to be effected by the war, long after they returned home. Men were left emotionally scared, even if they managed to get out of the war physically unharmed. The
In his fictional war novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien provides several vignettes of war experiences in different perspectives and mashes them together; thus, creating a true war story. O’Brien who has a scholarship for grad studies at Harvard is drafted to the Vietnam War. Although he has no choice but to join the war, he thinks of running away; however, he eventually joins the war because he was too embarrassed not to. Specifically in this excerpt, O’Brien employs repetition, imagery, and fantastic details to convey his guilt after killing a Vietnamese man in the war.
The Things They Carry: The Weight of Life Tim O’Brien’s story “The Things They Carried” follows a young Tim O’Brien through the horrors of the Vietnam War, feeling a sense of weight as he humps his gear across the battlefield as well as delves into the lives of the characters which are somehow thrown together in one of life’s most truly unique situations. Although a short excerpt, the reader is taken along on a journey of love, loss, and sacrifice. The reader is drawn into the story as young O’Brien flees to Canada. The reader can hear the roar of the artillery and planes flying overhead, as well as the awful stillness of the night; that eerie spooky stillness that comes with all the unknowns that are present only in the darkness. A little
There are many different type of elements for literary analysis. Some are plot, setting, characterization, protagonist vs antagonist and the list goes on. Each one gives the story its own meaning and connects to the main idea of the story. Two stories that I will be talking about today, each introduce their own element of literary analysis. The two stories I chose are “A Pair of Tickets” by Amy Tan and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien.