Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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 story mentions a lot of generals, sergeants, commanders and doctors, such as Sergeant Tim McHenry, Sergeant Hazard, General McAvory, Dr. Park and Dr. Emma Jordan. At some points in the story, too many are introduced at the same time so it can be quite hard to keep up with all of them.

Shame is a powerful feeling that will drive people to do extreme things to prove their strength. O’Brien wanted to

In the selection from the short story "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien the First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries letters from Martha, an English major at Mount Sebastian college, He always has the letters for him and he cherishes them deeply, This is proven on page 3 and 4 when it says " Unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack, slowly." but at the end of the selection he burns the pictures and the letters from Martha. He isn't better off with burning the letters. The letters and the pictures from Martha are what gave him the motivation to win the war, and if he won he could see Martha. There what made him

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.

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change” (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein). War can be a drastic change for the life of a person as war can ultimately morph them into a slave of the battlefield. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’ Brien describes the experiences of people in the Vietnam War and how they have become changed individuals from their past lives before combat. War pummels you with things that transcend your typical escapades and the more you try to understand them, the more you get sucked into the void of combat. The increased time the characters are in the battlefield, the more they have to think about it, thus shaping who they are. Only time can determine how much war can affect you.

Memories, symbols, and patterns affect how someone reads and understands a piece. They paint the concepts in bright colors, making the story more interesting and pulling the reader into itself. Noticing the memories, symbols or patterns lets the reader see the story in a way the author might not have intended. Suddenly, the reader is guessing what comes after the book, connecting it to their own life, and seeing the characters in a while new light, for example; In Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried, Tim tells a lot of flashbacks from the Vietnam War. The good, the bad, he remembers the men and the crazy stuff they did to pass time. He remembers the people of Vietnam, and the sweet one-legged boy who asked for a chocolate bar. “I remember

The Civil War, World War I, the Vietnam War, World War II, and the conflict in the Middle East are all wars that have been fought over the difference of opinions, yet come at the cost of the soldier's fighting for those opinions; Humans killing other humans, and death is just one of the many emotional scars soldiers face in war. Why, then, do we go to war when mental health is the cost? Many readers would disagree that the Vietnam War changed the view soldiers had on the world. Most would see the war as just senseless violence or a noble cause in the name of freedom. However, they are unaware of the changes war has on soldiers' perceptions of life.

A traumatic event occurs when a person is in a situation where there is a risk of harm or danger to themselves or other people. Situations like this are usually frightening or cause a lot of stress. In such situations, people feel helpless. We all cope with these traumas in different ways, in the protagonist’s case, he writes about it. Tim O’Brien expresses a candid tone in the passage corresponding to Lavender’s death from fictional novel, The Things They Carried using specific rhetorical strategies in order to create a relatable dilemma with how often times horrific stories are unintentionally skewed.

No war is easy for the soldiers who put their lives on the line to fight for what they believe in. The soldiers on both sides of the Vietnam War faced challenges that changed their lives forever and left a lasting effect on their physical and mental health. The hardships faced in the Vietnam War as depicted in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien are an accurate representation of the struggle faced by not only the soldiers fighting the war but also those who were involved in nonviolent positions.

The Vietnam War was a brutal and an arguably unwarranted part of our American history during the Cold-War Era. In an attempt to contain Communism, American and Vietcong soldiers, whether they wanted to or not, were subjected to horrible antagonistic violence. Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, retells the traumatizing (and sometimes calm) events of the war from his perspective, hoping to convey the most real feelings and experiences- fictionally. In this work of fiction, O’Brien differentiates between the “happening-truth”- what events took place and “story-truth”- what those events evoke, how those events felt. In this way, story-truth is a different, more humanized understanding of time and of memory. O'Brien's use of story-truth

The conclusion of the novel The Things They Carried, suggests that with the use of imagination and storytelling, can overcome the after effects of experiencing a traumatic event. In the concluding paragraph Tim O’Brien explains that his childhood love Linda died; however he can still be with her with the help of his imagination. O’Brien says, “I can still see her as if through ice, as if I’m gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at all. I can see Kiowa, too, and even Ted Lavender and Curt Lemon , and sometimes I can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlight” (page. 232). This quotation is O’Brien acknowledging that while yes his loved ones are

In the book, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, he explores the fine line between reality and fiction. Reality is what really happened. Fiction is fabrication of the situation. Reality is distorted when a situation is serious, emotional, and traumatic. In O'Brien experience, when telling a story from the observer's point of view, the observer unnecessarily adds details to make it more dramatic and animated. Which in turn,the incident changes the story from reality to fiction. The story teller wants the audience to experience what he felt when he experience the event. When the observer highjacks the reality of the story, the audience may not know the facts from the fiction.

In Tim O’Brien’s collection of short stories detailing the daily occurrences of the war in Vietnam, The Things They Carried, the author puts together a fictional storyline about a group of soldiers comprising of Alpha Company combatting together. The characters of the book are based around the men O’Brien had served with during the Vietnam War. Located at the beginning of the book, the words “a work of fiction” is typed by the title and author . The Things They Carried is considered fictional work because the short stories are not completely true and a figment of O’Brien’s imagination, but may be closely related to O’Brien’s experiences in Vietnam. O’Brien’s narrative can be considered a historical primary source since the author had firsthand

Throughout my four years at Magruder High School many different books, songs, and films have challenged the way I think about things and shaped my perspective. One of many books this year that left quite an immense impression on me was The Things they Carried by Tim O’Brien. This book is a collection of short stories by Tim O'Brien, about a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. The story follows young Tim O’Brien throughout his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam. One film that probably had the same impression on me as The Things they Carried was a film called Beast of No Nation. Beast of No Nation starring the iconic Idris Elba follows a young Agu as a civil war breaks out into his village, and is forced to escape corrupt government forces after seeing his dad and brother shot point blank and join a resistance group comprised of mostly child soldiers.