What I Doing Wrong?

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.

Years after John Wade returned from Vietnam, he was still experiencing nightmares and horrible illusions about what had gone on. The war effected John deeply, but he came out the same John Wade underneath. He continued to cover up the truth, just as he had done years earlier with his mirror. John Wade's characteristics, the things that made him who he was, were the result of his childhood, adulthood and the war – rather than the war shaping him, it was life

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses the art of fabricating stories as a coping mechanism. Trying to distinguish the difference between fictional and factual stories is a challenge in this book, but literal truth cannot capture the real violence that the soldiers dealt with in Vietnam, only “story truth” can. He explains, “If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made victim of a very old and terrible lie.” (O’Brien 65). The novel illustrates that storytelling is a way to keep the dead alive, even if it may not be a true story.

And lastly, an example that reveals Tim’s struggle is evident when he says, “For more than twenty years I've had to live with it, feeling the shame,[...].” (page 1) and “I survived, but it's not a

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.

In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the man is drafted into the Vietnam War where he faces many obstacles mentally and physically. The characters are heavily impacted by the war’s power and try to find ways within themselves to escape its brutality. The author uses language and character’s reactions to their inner conflicts to illustrate the mental stresses that arise in war.

The author believes that the war had a positive outcome but it was unnecessarily disturbing. The accomplishments made during the war has indeed undermined the failures, with misconstrued views. People today think this war was “The best war ever.” Adams creates a realistic picture of the war by describing the major aspects as well as topics that have little coverage to the masses. This includes; the development of teen culture, treatment of homosexuals who took part in the armed forces, minority combat during the war, the physical and mental scars, and economic reorganization of war production.

The short story that will be discussed, evaluated, and analyzed in this paper is a very emotionally and morally challenging short story to read. Michael Meyer, author of the college text The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, states that the author of How to Tell a True War Story, Tim O’Brien, “was drafted into the Vietnam War and received a Purple Heart” (472). His experiences from the Vietnam War have stayed with him, and he writes about them in this short story. The purpose of this literary analysis is to critically analyze this short story by explaining O’Brien’s writing techniques, by discussing his intended message and how it is displayed, by providing my own reaction,

Often times, we feel we deal with the weight of so many burdens. We feel overwhelmed and aren’t able to do anything about it. But unlike our minor situations faced daily that we feel is weighing down on us, there are many veterans who would love to have it as good as we do. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried discusses many veterans who experience the burden of shame and guilt daily due to their heroic actions taken during the Vietnam War. The book shows you how such a war can change a man before, during, and after it’s over.

However, Moore chooses to de-emphasize a few things. Such as how he went to school while his soldiers went to fight, and that he got into trouble when he was younger. All he says is how he lacked the combat tour patch, he often thought about his soldiers fighting, and that he caused trouble when he was young so his mother threatened to send him to military school. Despite this avoidance, Moore is still convincing. As Moe tells his own story, he builds his ethos or personal credibility. The listener knows Moore is knowledgeable in the subject of veterans because he is a veteran. Moore also uses the emotional appeal to cause his audience to think deeper and to take action. Here, Moore tells the stories of two other veterans. One veteran, Taylor Urruela, who lost his leg, but still tries to achieve both of his dreams and creates a group called VETSports. The other veteran Moore tells a story about is Tammy Duckworth. She is an ex-helicopter pilot, who lost both of her legs while serving, and now is a congresswoman who advocates for veteran’s issues. Both stories are powerful as they both give perspective on what a veteran has gone through while serving. That perspective is not one an average American knows or has for themselves, which causes the listener to think deeper about veterans, their experiences, and what “thank you for your service”

In the text, “Sonny’s Blues”, by James Baldwin, the narrator and his brother, Sonny, struggle through life and are constantly facing some sort of suffering. The narrator suffers through witnessing the downward spiral of his brother into drug addiction and the loss of his daughter while Sonny suffers through drug addiction, the battle that ensues afterward in his attempt to get back on his feet, and the discord in the relationship with his brother. Baldwin uses strong diction in order to show suffering as an inevitable part of being human. Baldwin wields careful diction to demonstrate how suffering is an inescapable piece of possessing humanity.

Throughout Born on the Fourth of July, Ron Kovic talks about his physical injuries, his “wounds,” as symbolic of wounds caused by the Vietnam War on America. In this book, his wounds act, in many ways, as a perpetuator of American opinion towards the war.

The army changes him, and the parents realize this when his “first letter came, it sounded nothing like [him]” (Jennings 1). Even after when he comes home, he acts completely different than he

Although it provides an important perspective into the lives of post war veterans, Hemingway’s novel is merely a fictional story and the events that occur in the book are not representative of any real life occurrences. Hemingway is able to accurately able to depict the shift of morale views that occurred after the war.  People went from emotional and restrained and god fearing, to liberated, materialistic, and pessimistic. Following the First World War, Veterans lost a belief in objective morality and correspondingly lost the belief in love and capacity to make deep connections with people. The characters within this novel face social and personal problems, whether it be physical ailments or mental disabilities, both of which impede their lives completely. Hemingway’s ability to capture and and present the overwhelming emotions that encompassed the Lost Generation is what makes his novel effective and historically

The novella Hearts and the four stories together signify a shift from an age of innocence when three friends from a Connecticut neighborhood enjoyed a simple childhood, free of violence, heartbreak, and protest through a ferocious era of change during the Vietnam War, and the pains of growing up, to a period where Carol, Sully-John and Willie try to live their lives with the mistakes they’ve made and with the heavy burden of looking back at the war and those lives and events that have impacted their own. Further, it describes a story that symbolizes King’s assertion that his generation had the chance to change the world, but the turbulent years during the Vietnam War destroyed that hope, and those in his generation either sold out their values and conformed or were destroyed by alcohol, drugs or disease.