Unity Of Purpose In O Brien's War

He wanted someone to blame for his hardships and the easiest target was the medic that was too nervous to properly treat him when he was shot. In his need for revenge, the reader can see that O’Brien has become taken his skill of storytelling to bring bring people back from the dead has gone from being good to immoral as he reanimates these soldiers to frighten someone else for a prank rather than in respect. This passage implies to the reader that the protagonist of this story can morph into the role of the antagonist when his main desire is revenge. Comparing O’Brien’s character at this point in the novel to the earlier stories one can realize that he went from believe he was too good for war to becoming a person that emcompasses all aspects of the

O’Brien always questioned the idea of “enemies”. Throughout the book he questioned in many ways and asked why were they enemies. What have they done to make them enemies, he sought for answers to his questions and eventually justified them by “if I don't kill them then they will kill me”.He was afraid of both killing, and dying but he knew that if he didn’t kill then he himself would be dead. These experiences and suppression of ideas are what led O’Brien’s to write The Things They Carried. In real life, Tim O'Brien feared the war and wrote this book to persuade others and to plant an idea in their head about the horrors that they should not want to suffer. Tim portrays his fear of the war by sharing his experiences as stories. Tim portrays many of his fears

Towards the end we see again how O’Brien bashes himself because he killed a young man, he believes that war is made up of acts of brutality and cowardice. O’Brien continually bashes himself for his acts of “cowardice,” or at least that is how he views these actions. There are also other acts in which courage or at least the thought of coming off as a brave more solid put the men into scary situations. Lemons behavior is a perfect example of this because he was known for his fear of the dentist, and he fainted even before the army dentist examined him. For Lemon to get over his embarrassment he got a perfectly good tooth removed, this is viewed as not an act of courage but an act of cowardice. At first, courage is played out to be something fundamental and severe for a person to have and everyone at home views the soldiers that went off to fight like heroes. However, in Vietnam, the idea of courage becomes almost laughable. They all fear everything, any little noise any sudden movements, any tiny bit of pain and even incest and diseases.

After being drafted, several thoughts came to his mind. O’ Brien thought about how his life will be if he goes to war. He states, “I imagined myself dead. I imagined myself doing things I could not do- charging and enemy position, taking aim at another human being” (44). It seems that O’Brien thought about his principles and morals as a human being. He believes killing innocent people was not a heroic act; it was an act of shame. On the other hand, he clarifies that not all wars are negative, “There were occasions, when a nation was justified in using military force to achieve it ends” (44). He considered to fight only in the cases were war is necessary to achieve a significant purpose. O’Brien uses examples of Hitler, referring him as an evil and one of the reasons he would have validated a war, and even joined the military if it were necessary. Yet, he does not want to play hero in a war that had not sense. For that reason, he decided to run away from his draft.

With this part of the story, O’Brien is able to inject the theme of shame motivating the characters in the book. This chapter is about how the author, who is also the narrator, is drafted for the war. He runs away to the border between Canada and the United States, he stays in a motel with an old man for about a week and finds that he should go to war for his country. In the beginning it was about shame, he didn’t want to look like a coward because in truth he was scared. He was afraid to face the pressures of war, the humiliation and the fact of losing “everything”. This man was an average person who lived an average life with no problems, until he got the notice about the war, which caused the shame and fear of being seen as a bad person to come out.

On page 190-191, O’Brien states, “I turned mean inside...a deep coldness inside me...capable of evil...need for revenge kept eating at me.” His newfound hatred changes him into a different person than he was before the war, a person that seeked revenge. The anger and hatred O’Brien experiences gives off a resentful and bitter tone toward Jorgenson’s failure of being prepared to provide first aid to his wound.

When truth became distorted by the ambiguous or absent motive for war, the soldiers needed to make up their own truths in order to keep sane enough to live through the senselessness and fear. Along with the fact that O’Brien’s boyhood died after killing the man in the path, his conception of truth died as well. He examines this fact when his daughter Kathleen asks him, “Daddy tell the truth, did you ever kill anybody?” and O’Brien ponders this stating, “And I can say, honestly, ‘Of course not.’ Or I can

Furthermore, O’Brien himself admits he went to war not out of courage, but out of embarrassment and cowardice. In the chapter “On The Rainy River,” O’Brien received a draft letter for the Vietnam War. He was in shock, “I was too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, to everything. It couldn’t happen. I was above it. A mistake, maybe—a foul up in the paperwork. I was no soldier… I remember the rage in my stomach. Later it burned down to a smoldering self-pity, then to numbness” (41-42). Obviously, O’Brien did not want to go to war. However, he was

Prior to learning he was drafted into a war he hated, we are told that he had recently graduated from college (38). O’Brien says, “I was twenty-one years old. Young, yes, and politically naive, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong” (38). The previous quote shows his confusion towards the war, he then goes on questioning the war by saying, “Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation or simple aggression?” (38) which furthermore provides an example of his uncertainty towards the war. While facing confusion, O’Brien also believed he was “too smart, too passionate” (39) for the war, he claims his drafting was “a mistake, maybe— a foul-up in the paperwork” (39). Both of the quotes show man vs. society conflict. Since O'Brien had recently graduated and received a full scholarship at Harvard, he felt like he was on top of the world, like any other person would if a war was not going on then, society was focused on something he didn't believe so he did not want to accept the harsh reality that he had just been drafted. The narrator also faces man vs self conflict, O’Brien wants to get out of the draft but, he says, “There was no happy way out...my health was solid; I didn't qualify for CO status — no religious grounds, no history as a pacifist” (41). O’Brien knows that it would be illegal to not follow the law of the draft but he also knows that he does NOT want to

It wasn’t until he went to war and was faced with the enemy that he would realize that the enemy wasn’t so different after all.

O’Brien fought in the war and named his fictional character after himself. It is the truth of his real life juxtaposed to the truth in his

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

This certainly comes out in the fragging incident, when the squad kills Lieutenant Sidney Martin. But there's something more. Another time, O'Brien was quoted as saying, "My concerns have to do with the abstractions: ... How does one do right in an evil situation?" (Bates 263). That is the big question, of course, that this novel deals with. See, the point that O'Brien is making is not that war is an evil situation. He's trying to take that for granted and move beyond. Now that you've got this evil situation, what do you do?

This quote is from “Speaking of Courage.” O’Brien is describing how the people from the town feel about the war and what they think of the war. To be honest, they ignore the terrible thing about the war and only wanting the good sides of the war. The people from the town support the war, they don’t want to see the bad side of the war story. Even though, O’brien want to explain or tell a good war story, Nobody wanted to know it. At this point of the story, O’brien just describe how the town people think of the war. How the town wanting to hear or expected for good things or news ,rather than wanted the know about the terrible stink of the war.

In terms of guerilla warfare, there are smaller groups of soldiers who are not part of a traditional army. These combatants use military tactics to fight a larger, more established army. Bonaparte, the main character in Frank O’Connor’s Guest of a Nation, and his comrade, Noble, are Irish rebels who are holding two Englishmen, Belcher and Hawkins captive. One night, Bonaparte receives the truth: that the two Englishmen are hostages and that ultimately he has to kill them. He stills hopes for circumstances to change, so he can abandon his duty and spare their lives because he really has nothing against them. Bonaparte grows to like Belcher and Hawkins despite their being on opposing sides of the war and vice versa.