Tim O'Brien

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Recommended: Tim O'brien, How to tell a war story and new historicist criticism

Tim O’Brien
“Intellect had run up against emotion. My conscience told me to run, yet some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing me toward the war. What it came to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid shame. I did not want people to think badly of me.” (Tim O’Brien; On the Rainy River).
Tim O’Brien is a twentieth- century author, he was born October 1 1946 in Minnesota. After O’Brien graduated from Worthington College, he received his draft papers for Vietnam. O’Brien served as a ‘foot soldier’ from February 1969 to March 1970. He was awarded the rank of sergeant and received the Purple Heart after sustaining a grenade wound. After serving O’Brien went onto graduate school at Harvard University, where is received an internship at the Washington Post. O’Brien’s writing career took off in 1973 when he released If I Die In A Combat Zone, Box Me Up And Ship Me Home, the book was about his experiences at war. Although it is not all rainbows and butterflies, O’Brien experienced depression, and personal desperation approaching suicide, without his army friends he felt alone and scared. He called himself a coward, a deserter of conscience, for not defying the draft. Luckily O’Brien found happiness when his wife Meredith gave birth to their two sons, Timmy, and Tad.
I am pretty sure when the president of the United States and the people in the Pentagon decided to send their troops to fight in Vietnam, they did not think that the veterans would write, and would become a famous literature writer. (Zins)
Tim O’Brien holds a unique ability to show the realities of everyday life for many veterans. When you listen to him speak you get a feel of what it is like to be a soldier at war, not only ment...

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....p., n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
Kaplan, Steven. "The Things They Carried." Understanding Tim O'Brien. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. 169-192. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 79. Detroit: Gale, 2005.Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
Lindbloom, James. "Gadfly Interview with Tim O'Brien, 3.99." Gadfly Interview with Tim O'Brien, 3.99. Gadfly Interview, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2014
O'Brien, Tim. "'The Things They Carried,' 20 Years On." Literature Resource Center. Literature Resource Center, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
"Tim O'Brien." Contemporary Popular Writers. Ed. Dave Mote. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Apr. 2014.
Zins, Daniel L. "Imagining the real: the fiction of Tim O'Brien." Hollins Critic 23.3 (1986): 1+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.

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