Essay about stylistic analysis of The Things They Carried

Tim O’ Brien, having the memories of war engraved in his mind, recalls the memories of his youth during battle in “The Things They Carried,” an intriguing collection of military accounts that symbolize his attempt to resist closure from past experiences. O’ Brien’s story reflects the difficult choices people have to make in their struggle to confront the war waging inside their bodies as well as on the ground they tread. In Steven Kaplan’s criticism, “The Undying Uncertainty of the Narrator in Tim O’ Brien’s The Things They Carried,” he explores the uncertainty and inevitability that lies in the path of each soldier through their military conquest of Than Khe. In context to O’ Brien’s

When men go off to fight a war, they often carry more emotional baggage than actual, physical baggage. “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing - these were the intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” (page 20) The war messes with their heads, causes them to become paranoid, scared, and anxious all hours of the day and night. Ted Lavender, who was terrified of his own shadow in Vietnam,

Tim O’Brien writes about both the physical objects they carry as well as their emotional burdens. The objects that these soldiers carry serve as a symbolism for what they are carrying in their hearts and minds. The soldiers carry items varying from pantyhose, medicine, tanning oil, and pictures. Jimmy Cross is an inexperienced sophomore in college, he signs up for the Reserve Officers Training Camp because his friends are doing the course. Jimmy Cross doesn’t want anything to do with the war or anything to do with being a leader. The item that Jimmy Cross carries with him are pictures of his classmate named Martha.

Some of the soldiers were such cowards that they injured themselves just to be taken away in a helicopter and extracted from the war scene. The soldiers “spoke bitterly about guys who had found release by shooting off their own toes or fingers. Pussies, they’d say. Candy-asses” (22). However, deep down inside, the soldiers who did all the mocking “imagined the quick, sweet pain, then the evacuation to Japan, then a hospital with warm beds and cute geisha nurses” (22). The soldiers even dreamt at night about freedom birds. The men were flying on a “real bird, a big sleek silver bird with feathers and talons and high screeching… The weights fell off; there was nothing to bear” (22). The soldiers did not want to be at war, they imagined to themselves “It’s (the war) over, I’m gone!—they were naked, they were light and free” (22).

Significance: This quote describes the entire style in which the book is written. Tim O’ Brien writes the novel as though it is a memoir, but this isn’t the case. In the copyright information, readers learn that most of the events, with a few small exceptions, were fabricated. Once the reader knows this fact, there is bound to be a curiosity of which portions of the book are actually based on O’ Brien’s life. This quote looks at the “fictional” Tim O’Brien’s view of war stories. He says that memory doesn’t always serve a person well when

In paragraph 11 O’Brien talks about “unweighed fear”. What does he mean by that? How does that further the theme of the text? Unweighted fear includes all of the bad memories that were made during the war as well as the good memories of the war. This furthers the theme because we are introduced to physical burden but as the story progress, we slowly see mental burden are being introduced.

"The Things They Carried," is a story about drafted soldiers during the Vietnam era who were sent to the Vietnam War. The author, Tim O’Brien, describes the things that the men carry during their tour of duty. The items carried are both physical and impalpable items and what these things are is subject to the individual soldier. They carry the necessities for survival in the jungles of Vietnam as well as the personal things each soldier feels necessary to make life as comfortable as possible. Additionally, each of the men carries the memories and fears of past and present experiences. The heaviness of the impalpable items is as tangible as that of any physical item, and not so easy to cast away. The literary argument in which the novel

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

Change In The Things They Carried a war novel by Tim O'Brien, we are told many short stories compiled to make a whole. I want to emphasis on the importance of the chapter "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong". In this chapter we are introduced to the character Mary Anne. She shows the changing power of Vietnam, that a sweet innocent young girl can come into this land and be forever consumed by her surroundings. The speaker show us this through character action, character description, dialogue and metaphor; this enhances the literary work by showing us that the soldiers will always be a part of Vietnam no matter how hard they try to get away from it.

            Tim O’Brien brings the characters and stories to life in The Things They Carried. He uses a writing style that brings stories to life by posing questions between the relationship of reality and fiction (Calloway 249). This is called metafiction and it exposes the truth through the literary experience. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction to make the characters and stories in The Things They Carried realistically evocative of the Vietnam War.

War is hell. The images that passed through the conciousness of those who participated in the Vietnam War left indelible visions. Rather than giving an opinion of,the war, Komunyakaa writes with a structure designed to allow the reader to experience the images and form their own opinions. The visions, images and experiences of thevietnam War as expressed by Komunyakaa vividly displays the war through his eyes and allows one to obtain the experiences of the war without being there. The title of the book when translated means "crazy soldier." This title gives the reader an immediate sense of the mind set developed by the soldiers. In providing further insight to the soldiers point of view, Specialist 4 Arthur "Gene" Woodley, Jr.

During the Vietnam War, soldiers were not given the opportunity to the modern coping mechanisms of our American culture today, such as illustrated in Tim O’Brien's The Things They Carried. These men were required to learn and develop new ways to cope with the problems of war, using only the resources they took with them, while in the Vietnamese jungle. It was not likely for any soldier to carry many items or loads with them, but if something was an essential, a way was found to take it with them, and coping mechanisms were a necessity to survive in this war.

The story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is an enormously detailed fictional account of a wartime scenario in which jimmy Cross (the story’s main character) grows as a person, and the emotional and physical baggage of wartime are brought to light. The most obvious and prominent feature of O’Brien’s writing is a repetition of detail. O’brien also passively analyzes the effects of wartime on the underdeveloped psyche by giving the reader close up insight into common tribulations of war, but not in a necessarily expositorial sense.. He takes us into the minds of mere kids as they cope with the unbelievable and under-talked-about effects or rationalizing

Poets frequently utilize vivid images to further depict the overall meaning of their works. The imagery in “& the War Was in Its Infancy Then,” by Maurice Emerson Decaul, conveys mental images in the reader’s mind that shows the physical damage of war with the addition of the emotional effect it has on a person. The reader can conclude the speaker is a soldier because the poem is written from a soldier’s point of view, someone who had to have been a first hand witness. The poem is about a man who is emotionally damaged due to war and has had to learn to cope with his surroundings. By use of imagery the reader gets a deeper sense of how the man felt during the war. Through the use of imagery, tone, and deeper meaning, Decaul shows us the

How can two stories be so different yet so similar at the same time? In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the author depicts the life of the soldiers as they are in Vietnam. He writes about what the soldiers carry in their bags, but he gives it a deeper meaning. He writes about the soldier’s life, all the emotional baggage they carry with leaving their loved ones and the pain of losing a fellow soldier. In “The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in Heaven” by Sherman Alexie, Victor goes through different encounters where he experiences racism. He ends up going back to his reservation and getting a job. These two stories are similar through the freight, “any load or burden” (YourDictionary.com), the characters carry and how the characters are seen as the enemy. Although they have these similarities, they also have their differences. Their differences are the main character’s conflict with their