Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Literary analysis on the things they carried
Essays on the things they carried
Essays on the things they carried
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Literary analysis on the things they carried
M&M's in The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien uses many interesting literary devices in his collection of short stories about his experiences in Vietnam. One of the most striking, yet understated, is his fleeting reference to M&M's. O'Brien allows them to be seen as something of a mystery, an enigma. O'Brien transforms M&M's into a symbol of America: mystical, powerful, and incredible. O'Brien also uses the simple image of a yo-yo to explain the necessity of American GI's to transform their mental attitudes to something different in order to survive the war. M&M's and yo-yo's are two very powerful symbols that O'Brien uses to explain the mentality of American soldiers in Vietnam.
"As a medic, Rat Kiley carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry, including M&M's for especially bad wounds, for a total weight of nearly 20 pounds." (O'Brien 5) The first mention of M&M's is cryptic. O'Brien makes use of a standard list to describe what Rat Kiley carries, until he reaches the M&M's. M&M's are separated by a phrase, they are set apart; they receive special treatment. O'Brien is making clear to the reader that M&M's are not to be included in the normal list of things carried by a medic. M&M's are above and beyond simple medical gear. M&M's are for "especially bad wounds," they treat something more than bandages and tape can. O'Brien allows the reader to understand that M&M's have significance, and are very important to the soldiers. O'Brien's brief mention of M&M's allows us to wonder if when this magical cure is used. Does Rat Kiley administer M&M's to Tim when he is shot? Could M&M's have saved Rat when he goes insane? Are M&M's something so mystical that they don't even need to be mentioned? O'Brien creates M&M's to be a symbol of everything that the soldiers leave behind. To Kiowa, M&M's embody the spirit of his grandmother and the faith of his father. To Norman Bowker, M&M's mean as much as his medals mean to his father. To O'Brien, M&M's capture the spirit of a kind old man in Minnesota. M&M's are O'Brien's alternative symbol for "Mom and Apple Pie."
Another symbol that O'Brien uses is Mitchell Sanders' yo-yo, Sanders is playing with his yo-yo when Curt Lemon is killed.
‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’Brien provides a insider’s view of war and its distractions, both externally in dealing with combat and internally dealing with the reality of war and its effect on each solder. The story, while set in Vietnam, is as relevant today with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as it was in the 1960’s and 1970’s in Southeast Asia. With over one million soldiers having completed anywhere from one to three tours in combat in the last 10 years, the real conflict might just be inside the soldier. O’Brien reflects this in his writing technique, using a blend of fiction and autobiographical facts to present a series of short narratives about a small unit of soldiers. While a war story, it is also an unrequited love story too, opening with Jimmy Cross holding letters from a girl he hoped would fall in love with him. (O’Brien 1990).
Born on October 1, 1946, William Timothy O’Brien, famously know as Tim O’Brien, served as a soldier in the Vietnam War (Britannica, 2016). Tim like most of the soldiers were either drafted or volunteered to fight in Vietnam. Many of them, including Tim battled the emotions of alienation and fearfulness during the time of the war. O’Brien illustrated those emotions in his chapter “The Things They Carried”. He listed the tangibles objects the characters carried in order to define their intangible qualities.
Experiences and Emotions in The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is not a novel about the Vietnam War. “It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought about from the war” (King 182). O'Brien makes several statements about war through these dynamic characters. He shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressures of war, he makes an effective antiwar statement, and he comments on the reversal of a social deviation into the norm. By skillfully employing the stylistic technique of specific, conscious detail selection and utilizing connotative diction, O'Brien thoroughly and convincingly makes each point.
Tim O’Brien wrote the novel The Things They Carried in 1990, twenty years after the war in Vietnam.In the novel,Obrien takes us through the life of many soliders by telling stories that do not go in chronical order. In doing so we get to see the physical and mental things the soldiers carry throughout the war in Vietnam.Yet the novel is more than just a description of a particular war. In the things they carried Tim O’Brien develops the characters in the book slowly, to show the gradual effect war has on a person. O’Brien shows this by exploring the life of Henry Dobbins, and Norman Bowker.
In Tim O' Brian's, The Things They Carried, he talks about the Vietnam War and it's effects country. O' Brian uses the psychological approach to tell the sorrows of war . The things that they carried had all represented a part of each soldier. In the days of the Vietnam war, they did not expect a woman to fight in a war. The story is better understood because the reader knows the background of the story and the characters personality. The thought was just unacceptable and definitely not normal. The two methods of interpreting a story fused together brings about a great understanding of the characters and the event which is about to take place. The deceitful interpretations presented, the things they carried, and a transformation of a dainty girl that turns into a survivor are examples of each method presented.
The main symbol in “The Things They Carried” is the necessities they carried as well as personal belongings. Each item tells a story that shows the past life on the soldier. Rat Kiley, the medic, carried M&M’s with him at all times. They were not to snack on during breaks. He brought them to provide as a placebo for soldiers who weren’t critically wounded and weren’t going to make it. The candy made some soldiers believe it was a painkiller and actually kept them alive and importantly quiet Ted Lavender’s tranquilizes and dope help reduce his fear. Kiowa carried an illustrated New Testament. For Jimmy it is his letters from Martha, it symbolizes the life that he wishes he could be living back at home with her. However, all of them carried one thing in common, the coward trait, the instinct to run at any given moment. Piedmont-Marton argues in her critical essay, “The things they carry on their bodies creates the illusion of unity and collaboration, but the fragile collective is always compromised by the things they carry inside and by the meanings and emotions attached to the smallest and most private of artifacts” (Para 3). She shows that the things that weigh the most have the least amount of meaning to them. The only thing getting them through times and not putting a bullet in their foot is the weightless mementos they have that give them
Literary Analysis Essay on The Things They Carried The book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is fiction and truth wound together to create a frustrating and addicting novel of fiction about the Vietnam war. O’Brien created stories by using his experiences during the Vietnam whether they are true stories or not is an unattainable knowledge for the reader, the only person of that knowledge is only O 'Brien himself. Through his writing he emphasized the the fact that you cannot perfectly recall the experiences of your past when your telling a story but the way it is told is “true sometime than the happening-truth(O’Brien 171) which helps give The Things They Carried depth beyond that of a “true”, true story. O’Brien has many characters in his book, some change throughout the book and others +are introduced briefly and change dramatically during their time in war and the transition to back home after the war.
There are many aspects of society that help shape who we become; such as, race, ethnicity, and status. Although, in the end, it is ultimately the choices we make that define us. As individuals we make certain choices, and as a society we label those individuals by their choices. One boy decided his achieved status would be of respect, while the other conceded to the fact that he could not do any better, with his life, than dealing. Someone once said “[We] are a product of our environment…” and to a certain extent this is completely agreeable. However, it can also be said that our environment is a product of society.
Tim O’Brien served in the Vietnam War, and his short story “The Things They Carried” presents the effects of the war on its young soldiers. The treatment of veterans after their return also affects them. The Vietnam War was different from other wars, because too many in the U.S. the soldiers did not return as heroes but as cruel, wicked, and drug addicted men. The public directs its distaste towards the war at the soldiers, as if they are to blame. The also Veterans had little support from the government who pulled them away from their families to fight through the draft. Some men were not able to receive the help they needed because the symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) did not show until a year
...ticle, Solomon has an unpleasant attitude of blaming others and complaining about the issue without proposing any real solutions. It also seems that he divides people into two categories: readers (good) and non-readers (bad), and he look down upon those who do not read. This will cause the readers to be emotionally uncomfortable and to reject his arguments and opinions because of the bias behind it.
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.
Some authors choose to write stories and novels specifically to evoke certain emotions from their readers as opposed to writing it for just a visual presentation. In order to do this, they occasionally stretch the truth and “distort” the event that actually occurred. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is a compilation of short stories about the Vietnam War with distortion being a key element in each of them.
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.
"Europe must prevent Greece from becoming an out-and-out catastrophe and make sure that the same fiscal 'remedy' is not applied to other weak economies" -- MEP, Franziska Brantner.
The Things They Carried, by author Tim O’Brien, is set during the Vietnam War; the story follows several American soldiers, and their struggles with identity. In the novel, O’Brien illustrates the personal and mental costs of enduring the horrific events of the war; which are capable of changing a person’s character. O’Brien chronicles the items carried by each serviceman and the ways in which the items provide solace during the war. The common survival essentials carried by each man could be used as a means to depict the traditional concept of “uniformity” within a military unit; items like lighters, can openers, wristwatches, pocket knives and canteens of water1 are all a basic means for physical survival. Tim O’Brien demonstrates that simple items like photographs, letters, the Bible, and a diary can help soldiers preserve their humanity: the person they once were.