Essay about Tim O'Brien's the Things They Carried

Many people in the 1960s and early 1970s did not understand why the United States was involved in the Vietnam War. Therefore, they had no desire to be a part of it. The Selective Service System, which was used to conduct the draft, had aspirations of directing people into areas where they were most needed during wartime. However, people took advantage of the draft system’s deferment policies to avoid going to war. Others refused induction or simply did not register. There were also people who left the country to escape the draft. The Vietnam War proved to be an event that many Americans did not agree with, and as a result, citizens took action to elude the draft entirely or to beat the draft system.

     Tim O’Brien is drafted one month after graduating from Macalester College to fight a war he hated. Tim O’Brien believed he was above the war, and as a result pursued the alternative of escaping across the border to Canada. This understandable act is what Tim O’Brien considers an

It is clear that Carter led an assemblage and picket of at least sixty people against RESIST and encouraged action, but his words did not explicitly encourage “physical harm” or “damage”. Rather, he pronounced statements such as “socialism is evil—resist” and “let us stand so our voices can be heard”. The appellant used such phrases as “the

In On the Rainy River, Tim O’Brien is still indecisive of whether he should go to Vietnam and fight or dodge the war and flee to Canada. On one hand the thought of being in the Vietnam war frightens O’Brien because he “had taken a modest stand against the war nor did he want to lose his life in a war that he couldn’t choose”. O’Brien “did not want to die, not there” (O’Brien 47). O’Brien knew for a fact that war was not meant for him because he lacked the emotional, moral strength a soldier needed to be fit for battle. From O’Brien’s perspective, he believed that if men wanted to “put their own precious fluids on the line”(O’Brien 45). Then that was fine, as long as it didn’t involve him, he was okay with people going into battle. At the time, Tim knew that it was a man 's duty to go fight in Vietnam and serve their country, but the thought of serving his country never crossed

The United States started fighting in the Vietnam War in 1964. In order to fight, the country issued a conscription, requiring all men between 18 and 25 years of age to help the nation by fighting in the war. Many men were forced to fight in a war they had no interest or inclination to fight in.Tim O’Brien was one of the numerous men who were drafted into the war. Although Tim O’Brien lost several things by going to Vietnam, he gained multiple unexpected things.

O’Brien’s story about getting drafted to serve in the Army at the tender age of twenty-one made me sympathize but that doesn’t mean I particularly like his decision at the end of the chapter. He said it himself, he took a mild stand against the Vietnam War and was going to Harvard soon; he was too smart for it because unlike every other student drafted he had an actual future. When the young student thought about crossing the border into Canada to avoid the draft he chickened out of it, even though he went there and spent weeks building up the courage to do it. To me it seemed like his fear of losing respectability and being ridiculed were greater than his fear for his own life. If I were somehow in this particular situation I wouldn’t have

I could not imagine how Tim O’Brien, and the hundreds of thousands of people felt when they received their draft notices. All I can do is imagine the initial panic and disbelief. I don’t believe that I would respond calmly and just accept the fact that the military basically owned me for the duration of the Vietnam War. But I don’t know if I would have the “courage” that Tim O’Brien talks about in The Things They Carried to dodge the draft and flee to Canada.

O’Brien tells a story of how he came to make the decision to enter the war after receiving his draft card. He had just graduated and was planning on attending Harvard for graduate school. He was torn with the idea of running to Canada to avoid the war (which he did not believe in). He drove a car all the way to the Canadian border and was rowed in a boat to the border, but could not bring himself to jump in to enter Canada. He returned, drove home and enter the

The fictional Tim O'Brien was a promising young man who has just graduated from college the month before when he receives his draft notice in the mail. The character’s reaction to being dragged into the very same conflict that he had took a stand against, albeit not in any radical fashion, is simply heart-wrenching. The initial response of confusion, anger, disgust, fear, and a myriad of other

The fact that he was so close minded that he was willing to put others into harm's way shows how strongly he did not want his life and his home to change, even if it were for the

twentieth-century U.S. history”. Antiwar sentiment, previously tainted with “an air of anti-Americanism”, became instead a normal reaction against exsessive and detrimental intervention. Dissent dominated America; the antiwar cause had become “institutionalized”. Socially, opposition to the war and government had become an “in” thing among both students and faculty members, as well as among leading politicians of the Democratic party “who undoubtedly saw political gains from such a stance”.

He hypothesizes that America greedily starts wars in order to gain capital, that the Pentagon protects the America’s investments rather than protects America’s people. Since his crusade began the number of times he has been arrested amounts to over one hundred times, but he takes pride in this and thinks it gives his fight more credibility. “The only way you can get at the state is by dealing with its laws. That’s why Thoreau would say ‘Dissent without resistance is consent.’ If you dissent without breaking the law then you are legitimizing the system that allows this kind of latitude. You have to break the law to touch the state.” (Rothschild). A different approach however is the growth of internet activism. More and more people with internet access are getting involved in activism by simply clicking on links having to do with movements going on around the country. Some would argue that these pseudo-activist are just pretenders and if they truly cared they would get out on the streets and make a real difference. But the actual result of internet activism is getting knowledge about these movements and facilitating an audience for the diehard dissenters. Although the presence of people is lacking the effect is just as

The antiwar movement in the United States started relatively small. It was started in college campuses by peace activists, one of the major universities where this was happening was UC Berkley. After several bombings in Vietnam the American public started to question the truth behind the governments word. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized marches and protests and attracted more support in the span of the next few years. The antiwar movement’s criticism of the Vietnam war was vast, from the unfairness of the draft and who it targeted, to the growing number of deaths and escalating costs of the war and most importantly the morality of the war and the

The two next checkpoints are to look for a third way and make the decision, he did decide to do without considering any moral matter and their consequences. The only thing that he cares was about power and money, and it is important to say that the money does not buy the happiness and any moral issue.

The Antiwar Protest of the late 1950s and early 1960s was a successful protest movement that utilized effective protest politics as defined by Zoe Trodd in her book, American Protest Literature. The effectiveness of the protest was due to the movement causing the American public to challenge their belief in the nation’s leaders capacity to provide unquestionable truths and due to the protest placing a colossal amount of powerful pressure on the nation’s leaders.(Zimmerman) Many historians believe the success of the protest led to a change in policy and a change in the American public’s view of politicians.(Zimmerman)