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Have you ever done something wrong? Did you try to place blame other places until eventually coming to the conclusion that it’s your fault? Well in Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried this is something that happens often. Especially after one of their men dies in combat. In the Novel The Things They Carried it starts of by talking about the things the men carried physically mentally and emotionally. Throughout the book It gives many examples of how they carry emotional things such as guilt. They tell stories to keep their men alive in memory. It explains how O'Brien has coped with war and why he writes the way he does. Throughout the book they talk about the death of their men and some of the places they were assigned to. It talks about …show more content…
Rat Kiley tells the story of Curt Lemon going trick or treating in in a village near where they were stationed.They say how he was butt naked and he came back with all kinds of treats. “ To listen to the story especially as Rat Kiley told it, you’d never know that Curt Lemon was dead. He was still out there in the dark, naked and painted up, trick or treating…”(227) This goes to show how they keep the dead alive with stories. They make the stories sound like they are happening right then and they take characteristics about the person that make them who they are and it allows the people to picture Kurt Lemon running around naked trick or treating. For this story of curt lemon they used his goofy nature to tell this story. In the book The Things They Carried Jimmy Cross chang as a charter he started out not caring only wanting to think about Martha and forgetting about war. After ted lavender dies he is determined to become a better Lieutenant for his men. It goes on to talk about the good things in war as well as the bad. The story is an eye opener for many who don't know much about
In the book “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien uses imagery, figurative language and repetition to convey his message. O’Brien’s purpose for story telling, is to clear his conscience of war and to tell the stories of soldiers who were forgotten by society. Many young men were sent to war, despite opposing it. They believed it was “wrong” to be sent to their deaths. Sadly, no one realizes a person’s significance until they die. Only remembering how they lived rather than acknowledging their existence when they were alive.
In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the readers follow the Alpha Company’s experiences during the Vietnam War through the telling’s of the main character and narrator, Tim. At the beginning of the story, Tim describes the things that each character carries, also revealing certain aspects of the characters as can be interpreted by the audience. The book delineates what kind of person each character is throughout the chapters. As the novel progresses, the characters’ personalities change due to certain events of the war. The novel shows that due to these experiences during the Vietnam War, there is always a turning point for each soldier, especially as shown with Bob “Rat” Kiley and Azar. With this turning point also comes the loss of innocence for these soldiers. O’Brien covers certain stages of grief and self-blame associated with these events in these stories as well in order to articulate just how those involved felt so that the reader can imagine what the effects of these events would be like for them had they been a part of it.
"Oh man, you fuckin' trashed the fucker. You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like fuckin' Shredded Wheat." I chose to start off my essay with this particular exert from the book because I think that it very much represents the story in itself. Azar said this, after Tim (supposedly) killed a Vietnamese soldier with a hand grenade. It shows that in times of war, how callous men can become. However, callousness varies, whether they chose to be apathetic, like Tim shows us after his grenade episode. Or whether they choose to be more myopic, as shown through Azar's insensitive actions (i.e. the young lady's tragic loss, the puppy, need I say more?). "The things they carried" by Tim O’Brien is a tale, not about war, but rather about war's affect on one's mentality.
In The Things They Carried there are three instances in which the main character and author Tim O’Brien experiences first hand the tragedy of death. During his storytelling O’Brien describes the man he kills, next he describes the first death he witnesses in Vietnam and finally his first experience early in life with the death of Linda. O’Brien tells the reader how he has able to cope and learn with each experience of death. In the book, The Things They Carried O’Brien tells how he copes with death in his own way and how his understanding of death evolves throughout the novel.
The narrator in “The Things They Carried” deals with the subjective conditions of war. Throughout the story, straining emotions often brought O’Brien’s teams emotions, especially after a death, causes a “crying jag” with a “heavy-duty hurt” (O’Brien 1185). The fury of emotion associated with death begins to erode the sharp minds of the soldiers and become mentally effective. After an event of large magnitude, it still began to take its toll on the protagonist as they often “carried all the emotional baggage of men who might dies” during the war (O’Brien 1187). The travesties that occurred with the brutality of war did not subside and began to affect those involved in a deeply emotional way. The multitude of disastrous happenings influenced the narrator to develop a psychological handicap to death by being “afraid of dying” although being “even more afraid to show it” (O’Brien 1187). The burden caused by the war creates fear inside the protagonist’s mind, yet if he were to display his sense of distress it would cause a deeper fear for those around him, thus making the thought of exposing the fear even more frightening. The emotional battle taken place in the psyche of the narrator is repressed directly by the war. The protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is also faced with the task of coping with mental
Tim O’Brien’s, “The Things They Carried,” contains a wide range of views based on criticisms such as historical, romantic, Marxist, and biographical. By referencing World War II, Vietnam, and his love for Martha, O’Brien relates to these criticisms through his main character. The war setting of this story plays a large part in its analysis. Presenting Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the main character, in World War II gives the reader knowledge relating to the issues of the time period. Jimmy’s display of affection for Martha shows that she is a powerful figure for Jimmy. He dreams of being with her even though she is unaware of his love for her. By applying the past and present to his story, O’Brien intertwines romanticism and history and introduces a sociological aspect as well by
The title of a book sets the stage of the story and proves to be one of the most important parts. In Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried it tells about exactly that it talks about all the things that soldiers carry with them and how it comes to affect them. Soldiers carry a huge variety of things many never think about being important and it affects each soldier in a different way.
In The Things They Carried, an engaging novel of war, author Tim O’Brien shares the unique warfare experience of the Alpha Company, an assembly of American military men that set off to fight for their country in the gruesome Vietnam War. Within the novel, the author O’Brien uses the character Tim O’Brien to narrate and remark on his own experience as well as the experiences of his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company. Throughout the story, O’Brien gives the reader a raw perspective of the Alpha Company’s military life in Vietnam. He sheds light on both the tangible and intangible things a soldier must bear as he trudges along the battlefield in hope for freedom from war and bloodshed. As the narrator, O’Brien displayed a broad imagination, retentive memory, and detailed descriptions of his past as well as present situations. 5. The author successfully uses rhetoric devices such as imagery, personification, and repetition of O’Brien to provoke deep thought and allow the reader to see and understand the burden of the war through the eyes of Tim O’Brien and his soldiers.
The novel, “The Things They Carried”, is about the experiences of Tim O’Brian and his fellow platoon members during their time fighting in the Vietnam War. They face much adversity that can only be encountered in the horrors of fighting a war. The men experience death of friends, civilians, enemies and at points loss of their rationale. In turn, the soldiers use a spectrum of methods to cope with the hardships of war, dark humor, daydreaming, and violent actions all allow an escape from the horrors of Vietnam that they experience most days.
The Things They Carried represents a compound documentary novel written by a Vietnam veteran, Tim O'Brien, in whose accounts on the Vietnam war one encounters graphical depictions of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Thus, the stories "Speaking of Courage," "The Man I Killed," "How to Tell a True War Story," "Enemies" and "Friends," "Stockings," and "The Sweetheart of The Song Tra Bong "all encompass various examples of PTSD.
A 19-year old female from Harford County, Maryland, narrated the story of Black Aggie, the urban legend of an overnight stay in a cemetery. She grew up Christian, and still lives in one of the more rural areas of Maryland with her younger sister and parents, who own and work at an electrical contracting business. Accustomed to hearing many ghost stories and urban legends, she first heard the story of Black Aggie during a middle school slumber party. Late one Saturday night over pizza in our Hagerstown dorm, she was more than willing to share her favorite urban legend with me.
The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War that the author, Tim O’Brien, uses to convey his experiences and feelings about the war. The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O’Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. To O’Brien the novel is not only a compilation of stories, but also a release of the fears, sadness, and anger that he has felt because of the Vietnam War.
The Things They Carried is filled with short stories retelling fictitious memories from war and interactions with squad mates. O’Brien progressively weaves emotional and physical strain through each story as it escalates deeper into
After the death of Curt Lemon, Rat writes a letter to Lemon’s sister about how great her brother was to him. He tells her about her brother “going out on these really badass night patrols”, having “stainless steel balls”, and going “fishing with a whole damn crate of hand grenades” along with all the gore that this ensued (174). Rat “pours his heart out” into this letter, but Curt’s sister never replies back (175). To Rat, these were the truths that made Curt Lemon a great man; however, to Lemon’s sister, these were not what made her brother great. In fact, for her, these stories were not true stories about her brother because the man Rat was describing was a stranger to
In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story” Rat Kiley’s friend, Curt Lemon, dies and Rat writes Curt’s sister a letter. In that letter Rat was telling Curt’s sister how much he loved him and that he was a hero. Two months pass and she never writes back. O’Brien says, “A true war story is never moral” (65) and “If a story seems moral, do not believe it” (65). A true war story sometimes can’t be believed because some of the most unbearable parts are true but some of the normal parts aren’t. When Rat explains how Curt Lemon died, it just seemed like it