Write A Critical Analysis Of Tim O Brien

The Vietnam War was a troubling time for Tim O’Brien. He battles with himself over a decision he makes, which makes him feel like a coward. He tells of a personal experience he has shared with no one not even his wife. His short story “On the Rainy River” is absolutely captivating. In this true story he uses a plethora of literary devices that leads the reader from beginning to end to visualize, feel, and sympathize with him as he tells his personal and emotional battle.

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.

In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses this story as a coping mechanism; to tell part of his stories and others that are fiction from the Vietnamese War. This is shown by using a fictions character’s voice, deeper meaning in what soldier’s carried, motivation in decision making, telling a war story, becoming a new person and the outcome of a war in one person. Tim O’ Brien uses a psychological approach to tell his sorrows, and some happiness from his stories from the war. Each part, each story is supposed to represent a deeper meaning on how O’Brien dealt, and will deal with his past. In war, a way to

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.

O’Brien gains a new perspective on his experiences in Vietnam when he thinks about how he should relay the story of the man he killed to his impressionable young daughter.

The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.

There are three main thing Tim O’Brien wants us to know about war. The first one thing is how war takes lives. The second one is how war helps us not feel alone. And the last thing is how war consoles us.

During the apex of the Vietnam War Tim O’Brien lived through one of the darkest events in the nation's history. The My Lai Massacre and his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD) inspired O’Brien to create such a beautiful novel In the Lake of the Woods. Tim O’Brien achieves the themes of denial and trauma by his masterful use of setting, imagery, and conflict.

Tim O’Brien began this collection with a short story detailing the things soldiers carried, because he wanted to set the mood for the reader, by detailing why they were carrying these things, and what the area around them was like. Whenever he explains what they are carrying, he goes into detail about the weight of what they are carrying, and what happened if the soldier got killed. He talks about a soldier named Jimmy Cross carrying letters and pictures from his love, Martha, and how Jimmy stays up late at night thinking about her, and wishing he was with her (O’Brien pg. 3-4). Another soldier he talks about, Ted Lavender, carried around six or seven ounces of premium dope, until he was shot (O’Brien pg. 3).

Tim O’Brien is known for sharing his life stories with the world. In many of his stories and memoirs he goes into detail about his experiences in the Vietnam War. As quoted from Tim O’Brien, “My passion[s] as a human being and as a writer intersect in Vietnam, not in the physical stuff but in the issues of Vietnam -- of courage, rectitude, enlightenment, holiness, trying to do the right thing in the world” (Chin 1062). Both of his stories Ambush and The Things They Carried are memories of what happened to and around him during the war. He goes into detail about the war and the hardships he had to face to survive. Especially in The Things They Carried he emphasizes the physical and emotional traumas the characters had to face. Tim O’Brien is an influential American author who is highly known for his memoirs and stories such as Ambush and The Things They Carried.

One of the most mysterious characters in the book The Things They Carried is Tim O’Brien. Throughout the book, we see countless of experiences he is forced to go through. From spending time with fellow soldiers to being caught in a mime field, O’Brien has been through a lot! While most of his experiences are pretty straight forward in explaining what happen, there is one experience O’Brien never seems to give a direct description of. This would be whether or not he has killed someone. At one point in the book, O’Brien admits that he has invented some of the stories he has shared, yet he still considers them true. When asked whether or not he had really killed anyone, O’Brien’s response is “I can say, honestly,

The Vietnam War was a long conflict lasting between 1955 to 1975 between the communist North and the democratic south with help from the United States. More than 3 million people, including 58,000 American troops were killed in the conflict. Tim O 'brien 's short story “The Things They Carried” follows a platoon named alpha company during the peak of the Vietnam war led by first lieutenant Jimmy Cross who is very charismatic but in his mind he is unsure how to lead his squad because his mind tends to wander to a thought of a girl back home. Throughout the story he has overcome with emotions and guilt because he believes he his the reason for some of his squadmates death. “The Things They Carried” Embodies the hardship, reality, and price/toll of war, ultimately Tim O’brien writes this masterpiece as not of a war story, but as a love story and how that love changed a man.

In the article, “A Conversation With Tim O’Brien,” he is asked several questions on war; specifically the Vietnam war. After O’Brien was asked how a modern day soldier’s experience with war may differ than his own experience, he began to speak of how there are no more drafts like there was when he was enlisted, and then continued to answer in an appalling manner; “ There should be a law: If you support a war, you must go. And your children must go. Otherwise you’re a hypocrite and will be imprisoned for murderous hypocrisy. (Unless, of course, you support a war only to the extent that other people should die in it.)” When a person supports a war, that does not mean that they themselves should fight. If the President of the United States supports

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,