1990, when The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien was published the reality of Vietnam was still a much recent memory for most. The fear of being drafted, the heartache that came with losing your friends and family in the war, and not to mention the mental scarring it did to those who came out of Vietnam alive. The Things They Carried highlighted some of these things and even showed a bit of what life was like after coming out of something as emotional and traumatic as a war like that. However, from the point of view of a Vietnamese veteran the book could make it appear as if the Vietnamese were being dehumanized and disgraced, and it can also seem like it tries to make people sympathize with the American soldiers who invaded Vietnam. Throughout …show more content…
How the war affected them physically, as well as mentally. Many of the soldiers suffered from PTSD, some were haunted by the terrible things that had happened to them or others while in the war, and some even committed suicide because of the pain they felt after the war. From the perspective of an American this could just be seen as something that is natural that comes from war, and with such a devastating and traumatic war cases like this are to be expected. Although; to look at this from the point of view of the Vietnamese it could just be seen as a way to sympathize with the soldiers who invaded Vietnam. To be Vietnamese and to interpret the text in this way would be outrageous and could probably infuriate them to no extent. The north Vietnamese at the time were trying to raise a new country under communism that would have connected all parts of Vietnam, but because the United States of America was afraid of the spread of communism they decided to invade Vietnam and prevent this from happening. They evidently failed and the war was lost, so this book could be seen as a way to forget about how horrible the loss in Vietnam was and how terribly the U.S. soldiers suffered from having to fight in the
Going through an era when the Vietnam War was a smash hit in your town, many high school senior boys would be drafted out if their number was on the list of people. The men drafted had to leave behind their families and aspirations. Tim O’Brien uses different perspectives in The Things They Carried to show if something tragic happens in life, consequently dealing with it may be hard. Moving on will help in the future.
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.
Taking place in the middle of the Cold War Era, the Vietnam War was a war not only over land but for many a battle to protect democracy and to fight communism. Much like any other account of a war, the details are gruesome and it is even more difficult to imagine. However, following the Vietnam War one author, who served in the war, decided to take up the task and make an historic account of one of them most grueling wars ever fought. Tim O’Brien is a Vietnam veteran who wrote the novel The Things They Carried. There is a fine line to be walked when writing the accounts of the war in a way that not only informs but also entertains; however, Tim O’Brien walks it successfully. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried,
In the book, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'brien, the title of the first chapter perfectly mimics the name of the book itself. The author talks about the many items soldier’s carried with them into the Vietnam War, as well as the effects they had on his many teammates. Each new chapter, though, gives new insight as to what they carried around with them besides physical objects. Despite palpable things in which they were required to have, young men would find themselves bearing the heavy weight of responsibility and emotional trauma that came with them. In order to cope with these endeavors, soldier’s would also bring with them something to help, whether it was simply the knowledge of God, or a reason for fighting. O’brien’s stories give
As Tim O’Brien states in his short story book, The Things They Carried, the only true thing about war is its allegiance to evil and obscenity. One example of this faithfulness war has to stick to its truth is the inevitable death of many soldiers. War consumes. It consumes a large amount of resources, money, energy, time, but most of all it consumes human lives. The ones who don’t pass must bear the witness of the death of the others. “In the Field”, one of the short stories in O’Brien’s book, explores the way death is handled by soldiers and the process by which absorb the emotions that come along with it.
The Vietnam War began when the North Vietnamese government and the Vietnam congress fighting to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses themes such as love, shame and guilt to illustrate the tangible and intangible items the soldiers carry throughout the war and the rest of their lives.
At some time in life, a person will experience the death of a relative or lose something that was very important to him or her. After that traumatic event, will that person confront his or her pain, or will that person bury it deep within them? Both ways are possible, however, only one is effective in the long term. According to Tim O'Brien, the most effective way to heal after a traumatic experience is to share stories. In Tim’s book, The things they carried, he used the motifs of loneliness, life, and the mood of nostalgia to illustrate the importance of sharing stories during a healing process.
Negative experiences can have lifelong effects on a person, no matter what situation they were in. They live the rest of their lives with flashbacks, nightmares, and survivor’s trauma. Some trauma survivors have help coping with the effects of their situation but most people don’t have any way of coping with what they have seen and gone through. In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, the narrator, Tim O’Brien, writes the stories about the Vietnam War that he was in, 20 years after the war ends. The narrator O’Brien has trouble with coping after the war so he writes stories about the war describing what they went through in detail. He was fresh out of college when he was drafted into the war, so he was very young and inexperienced. He had to go into a war that he knew nothing about and
The Vietnam War started November 1, 1955. It started when President Eisenhower didn’t want communism to spread throughout the world. Tim O’Brien served in Vietnam as a foot soldier from 1968 to 1970. In Tim O’Brien’s novel “The Things They Carried”, shame, love, and violence play a vital role in the soldiers’ lives.
The Things They Carried is a brutally honest novel about, not the Vietnam war itself, but about a veterans experiences with it. The war itself is merely a setting, taking a backseat to the characters who are coping with things ranging from love, fear, and, most importantly to this book, loss. The novel is somewhat reminiscent of an anthology, with each chapter usually surrounding a new story that O’Brien experienced or heard about. This haphazard way of storytelling reflects the war itself, and the way these soldiers had no idea where they would be the following day, if they were even still alive. O’Brien also consistently questions the honesty of the stories his fellow soldiers told, as well as the stories he himself is telling the readers. This, once again, may be to evoke feelings of deceit and fear, not knowing if anything being
In the book The Things They Carried by, Tim O’Brien portrayed different stories from Vietnam War. Nobody really knows the different things that happen to soldiers in Vietnam. They get paranoid, lose their sense of morality they become angry and frustrated. No one will ever understand the things they are experiencing unless you were in their shoes. In the book there were stories about different historical events and situations the soldiers portrayed. Soldiers who are in the war sometimes do not know the severity and horrors of it all. Some of them have seen and been through a lot. In the war people suffer from physical, mental, and emotional anguish. The one thing they have a hard time doing is coping with it all. There are a lot of issues such
“I think it's important to have closure in any relationship that ends-from a romantic relationship to a friendship. You should always have a sense of clarity at the end and know why it began and why it ended. You need that in your life to move cleanly into your next phase,” (Jennifer Aniston). The best teachers are those experiences which challenge us. If people work to understand these relationships, they will gain great knowledge. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie is a girl who goes through life clueless of what love means and struggles to find its true purpose. In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien tells his stories about the Vietnam War and talks about those he has lost in the
In Tim O’Brien’s historical fiction novel The Things They Carried, O’Brien uses a character also called Tim O’Brien to tell about experiences from the Vietnam War (1954-57). In the chapter, “How to Tell a True War Story”, O’Brien states “a true war story is never moral.” (65) War is not only horrid and unsightly, it also affects a soldiers’ mental make-up. Filled with death and gore, the Vietnam War has the capability to leave soldiers physically and mentally unstable. O’Brien begins his journey as a frightened, inexperienced young man, terrified of the great dishonor that follows evading the war. Tim O’Brien departs the Vietnam War full of remorse then tells short stories throughout the novel, The Things They Carried, about the Vietnam war as a coping skill. To show vivid emotions O’Brien uses the novel to fill in the blanks of his memories. Indulging in The Things They Carried is comparable to sitting in a living room, having a conversation with a war veteran.
Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is considered one of the finest book about the Vietnam War. It is a book about "storytelling, how stories ruled [soldiers] live, how they're told and retold...," and how the war changed the lives of many. O'Brien's novel gives many examples of people who were profoundly changed by their experiences in war. Many soldiers felt the guilt, many felt the grief, and many were confused by the war itself and its experiences. The soldiers faced the burdens of fear, emotions, grief, terror, love, and longing. The war effects the soldiers emotionally, mentally, and physically.
The Things They Carried is a collection of fictional stories inspired by Tim O’Brien’s time in the Vietnam War and the struggles young men had to face in one of the most controversial wars in U.S. history. After the Vietnam War was over, when the veterans came home, most of which were drafted, they shunned by the American public for fighting a war in which many did not support and many veterans were homeless due to the lack of support from the government. Therefore, O’Brien uses these stories to not only have a deeper meaning and understanding of what the soldiers had to endure (both during and after the war), yet to also keep the dead alive by telling their stories. To do so, Tim O’Brien effectively