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The things carried by tim o'brian critical analysis
Reader's response to criticism of "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien
The things carried by tim o'brian critical analysis
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The Things They Carried written by Tim O’ Brien is a well written work of fiction. In the story O’ Brien closely makes an association with the physical, psychological, and emotional weight the soldiers bared while serving in the Vietnam War. Throughout the story O’Brien examines what it takes to tell a good war story while he uses his own experiences in conjunction with his imagination to weave together a series of stories. He does a phenomenal job at making the reader feel as if they themselves are a solider serving in the Vietnam War. However, like O’Brien states in the book “A true war story is never moral” (O’ Brien 65).
The Vietnam War holds a different meaning for people both young and old. The longest known US war lasted a solid eighteen years. Some would describe the war as a puzzle since not everyone was for the war. At the age of 21 Tim O’Brien was drafted for the Vietnam War. He states that The Things They Carried is a way for readers to feel what he felt during the war. The key experiences and emotions that he wants the reader to feel are frustration, not being able to find your enemy, having soldiers all around you losing their life, and being upset about being in a war in which you yourself do not believe in. Now forty years later after the Vietnam War first started O’Brien is left with face-less responsibility and face-less grief. He says it best himself “You bring war back home with you. The things you carried in the war are also things you brought back home.”
The Things They Carried is a novel and a novel is a form of art. The main purpose for any form of art is to give people an outlook and an insight into reality. O’Brien does a brilliant job in using his technique as an author to make the reade...
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...rtist and just like any artist O’Brien wants to change your mind. He wants you to see the world the way he sees the world. This is his intent to have the reader believe that this collection of memories, feelings, and actions is actually real and in some parts of the story he has the reader believing that they themselves were once a solider in the Vietnam War. Life itself is a lot like how O’Brien describes war. He says “War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is drudgery. War makes you a man; makes you dead” (O’Brien 76). Any well written novel will intrigue a reader because when an author is able to bend in emotions of a real life event with a fictional standpoint of things a story has been written.
In the novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien shares several different experiences during the Vietnam War that had a great impact on the soldiers that fought along side him and himself. Although not all the stories are connected to one another, some intertwine. Attempting to show the reader who he is then and who he is now throughout the book, O’Brien flips back and forth between the past and the present: sharing his experiences during the war and his current time being a post-war father. War takes a toll on a man in more ways than one. Many seek comfort in bringing personal items with them to battle to remember where they came from and what they have to look forward to when returning home.
What O’Brien sees as the purpose of the storytelling, and fictionalizing his experiences in Vietnam, can be seen through the “style” of his writing. It’s more than just a collection of stories. It’s a way for him to let go and start a new beginning. It is labeled “fiction” to make the story seem more engaging and to bring up the question, “Did this really happen?”
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 discover and to invent new ways to release oneself from the pressure of it, O’ Brien’s writing is all about it; this stories will makes the reader understand his burden.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried storytelling mode allows his characters to empathize with the characters personalities and emotional burdens during the Vietnam War through the use of many elements of fiction including characterization, war settings, irony of situation, symbolism, and plot but most notably his technique of correlation between the weight of the stuff each soldier carried on them necessary for their survival in battle and the weight of the stuff they carried internally such as their doubts, fears, love and hopes. The story takes place in the late 1960s during the Vietnam War and the author begins the story by presenting the main character, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, and provides insights of his feelings and thoughts by describing the tangible and intangible things he carries: letters and two pictures of a girl named Martha and his love or obsession for her. He also lists some of the personal items, delivering hints of his characters’ personalities to the readers and what these items meant to them. He writes how Henry Dobbins, “the big guy”, carries extra food supplies and his girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck because he thought that it brought him good luck during battle.
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a brutal fiction story that tells about the treacherous adversity a group of men went through during the Vietnam War. The story talks about the brave soldiers
The title of the book itself couldn’t be more fitting. The Things They Carried is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Tim O'Brien about soldiers trying to live through the Vietnam War. These men deal with many struggles and hardships. Throughout this essay I will provide insight into three of the the numerous themes seen throughout the novel: burdens, truth, and death.
Written by author Tim O’Brien after his own experience in Vietnam, “The Things They Carried” is a short story that introduces the reader to the experiences of soldiers away at war. O’Brien uses potent metaphors with a third person narrator to shape each character. In doing so, the reader is able to sympathize with the internal and external struggles the men endure. These symbolic comparisons often give even the smallest details great literary weight, due to their dual meanings. The symbolism in “The Things They Carried” guides the reader through the complex development of characters by establishing their humanity during the inhumane circumstance of war, articulating what the men need for emotional and spiritual survival, and by revealing the character’s psychological burdens.
The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, is not just a book about what soldiers carried during the Vietnam War, but a book about what they carried with them for the rest of their lives. The book also describes the traumatizing deaths which caused many soldiers to start to blame themselves.
The Things They Carried, a novel written by Tim O’Brien leads the readers to believe that a soldier’s imagination can be seen as both harmful and beneficial. This captivating story is set during the Vietnam War. Through the story's narrator, Alpha Company, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, readers get a feel for what the soldiers at that time had to endure. The book speaks of the mental and physical changes that happen to soldiers as days turn into months and months into years. Although the story is set in the Vietnam during the 1960s and early 1970s its relevance is still apparent today with the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, the Department of Veteran Affairs stated that between 1990 and 2007 nearly 74,000 Americans were
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 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 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.
The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War, but in reality, the book centers around the relationships the men make, their connections to the world they left behind and the connections that they formed to Vietnam. The stories are not war stories, but stories about love, respect and the bonds made between men when they spend day after day fighting just to stay alive.
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.
O’Brien shows that imagination can help us do things that could not be done in real life. According to Tobey Herzog, “O’Brien invents a soldier-author narrator, also named Tim O’Brien, to tell stories of his life and Vietnam War experiences, to relate war stories told to him by other soldiers, and to comment on the art of storytelling…” (104). Tobey Herzog is saying that O’Brien was able to invent another version of himself in the novel so he would be able to tell stories of his life and also other characters’ life stories. O’Brien tries to invent something that he has never done before. When O’Brien got drafted to the war, he did not want to go. He uses his story chara...