Tim O Brien's Research Essay

As stated in the thesis, Timothy O’Brien also writes his short story, “How to tell a True War Story,” in the first person narrative, although the style in which he narrates is quite different than from the style in “A & P.’’ O’Brien, who was an actual soldier in the Vietnam War takes on more of an autobiographical approach to telling his “true war story.”

The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.

Historical- This story was written in the 1970’s about war, the Vietnam War to be more specific. The reason I know it was that war is because the author himself fought in the Vietnam War. In 1968, after graduating from college, O’Brien gets a paper saying he’s being drafted. He was going to flee to the boarder of Canada but he went to war. Coming back after the war he attended Harvard and became an Award winning novelist. The text is saying briefly it was a hard period in time. There were parts where he talks about the character Paul and he says “He was pretending he was a boy again”, I’m guessing deep down he didn’t want to be there fighting.

In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien uses many short stories to describe his experience in Vietnam. The story that captured many aspects of writing was “How to Tell a True War Story” because it acts as a guide to writing a true story. O’Brien uses many different rhetorical strategies, narrative techniques, and establishes a theme in this story to help develop his characters and story line.

The main character and story line is based off true stories of the author, Tim O’Brien’s experiences in the Vietnam War. In the present, O’Brien is 68 and is a well rounded individual with a bold personality for a Vietnam veteran.

Through The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien moves beyond the horror of fighting in the Vietnam War to examine with sensitivity and insight the nature of courage and fear. Included, is a collection of interrelated stories. A few of the stories are brutal, while others are flawed, blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. All the stories, however, deal with one platoon. Some are about the wartime experiences of soldiers, and others are about a 43-year-old writer reminiscing about his platoon’s experiences. In the beginning chapter, O’Brien rambles about the items the soldiers carry into battle, ranging from can openers, pocketknives, and mosquito repellent o

In The Things They Carried, Tim O 'Brien uses a variety of stories to explain the life experiences that he and many of his fellow soldiers endured during a single year in Vietnam. He tells these stories in a way that we can connect to these experiences. We never spent time in Vietnam, but O 'Brien wants us to feel like we were there. O 'Brien uses what he calls "story-truth" to write these stories. The outcome or the people may be different but the feeling is real; that 's the truth in the story, the feeling. He wants us to feel what he felt, see what he saw. He doesn 't just tell us what was happening exactly; he tells a fictional story that conveys the same emotion. He plays with the truth, that 's the reason why this book is a work of

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.

Tim O’Brien was born in Austin, Minnesota on October 1, 1946 (Glerean). He spent his childhood growing up in Worthington, Minnesota. Worthington is a small town in the southern part of Minnesota. Tim’s father was an insurance salesman and participated in World War II as a sailor (Glerean). Tim’s mother was an elementary school teacher. Tim had an all-American childhood. He loved learning magic tricks, playing baseball, and reading books. He attended Macalester College and graduated in 1968 with a degree in political science (Tim O’Brien). Around the same time he received his diploma, Tim also received an unexpected and unwanted piece of paper: a draft notice (Glerean). O’Brien was against war, but despite this fact he went overseas to fight for America. He felt pressure from both his family and his country to fight in the war. O’Brien went to Vietnam despite his negative attitude toward the conflict. O’Brien fought in the Vietnam War from, 1969 to 1970. “He served in the 3rd Platoon; Company A, 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry

Tim O’Brien wrote a memoir, in which he wrote about his life as a Vietnam soldier, called If I Die in a Combat Zone. Raised in Worthington, Minnesota, Tim O’Brien was influenced by wars while growing up (particularly the Korean War). Soon landing in the training facility at Fort Lewis in Washington, O’Brien’s life was about to change. In If I Die in a Combat Zone, author Tim O'Brien argued that the Vietnam War was full of courage through how the soldiers chose to stay and battle for their nation, his depictions of Plato, and through O’Brien’s experiences of his fellow soldier’s deaths.

The article Understanding Tim O’Brien by Steven Kaplan states, “Tim O’Brien was inducted into the United States Army in August of 1968. His first seven months were spent in Vietnam, stationed about four or five miles from the American base in Chu Lai. The place was called Landing Zone Gator. Storytelling and imagination are major themes in Tim O’Brien’s fiction. His awareness in these specific topics come from the environment, in which he was raised.

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

In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses this story as a coping mechanism; to tell part of his stories and others that are fiction from the Vietnamese War. This is shown by using a fictions character’s voice, deeper meaning in what soldier’s carried, motivation in decision making, telling a war story, becoming a new person and the outcome of a war in one person. Tim O’ Brien uses a psychological approach to tell his sorrows, and some happiness from his stories from the war. Each part, each story is supposed to represent a deeper meaning on how O’Brien dealt, and will deal with his past. In war, a way to

Tim O’Brien brings the Vietnam War back to life in The Things They Carried (1990) and elucidates the wounds suffered by soldiers during and after the war. The three main characters in this novel that exemplify the physical, social, and emotional wounds are Tim O’Brien, Norman Bowker, and Mark Fossie. These men go through immense pain both during and after the war, which is not easy to heal.

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