Essay Compare And Contrast Hemingway And Tim Obrien

A Study of Literary Works by Ernest Hemingway and Tim Obrien

A trip into the world of literature includes the understanding of all the key elements the author intends to deliver. There are many different literary elements that can be used to deliver a very compelling story. Within Tim Obrien’s “The Things They Carried” as well as “Hills Like White Elephants” written by Ernest Hemingway, use many of the key literary features to deliver well written and enthralling classic short stories. This essay will attempt to provide evidence that although Hemingway and Obrien have different writing styles, they both use similar elements to provide very similar core conflicts within each story. When looking at the core conflicts within each story similarities

Obrien’s simplicity appears in what the soldiers carry; because the items may provide a sense of safety or security, a distraction from boredom or fear. The items provide comfort from the horrors of war, as did the letters from home, photos of a sweetheart, and a pebble sent from a friend (Wells, 2000). A clear example of Obrien’s simplicity is found in; “To carry something was to ‘hump’ it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.” (Clugston, 2014) Obrien’s purpose for this passage is to express the importance placed upon what was carried. This simple use of figurative language is placed strategically throughout the story, all building towards the climax of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s epiphany of letting go of some of those things he carries, as they distract from his duty, the safety of the soldiers under his command. This epiphany not realized by the Lieutenant until Tim Lavender, a soldier under the command of First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, lost his life due to the distraction from the very items that provided a sense of security. Through the use of the preceding literary items, figurative language, epiphany, and climax, Tim Obrien takes on the act of trying to reveal the uncertainties about the Vietnam War one step further, by looking at it through imagination (Kaplan, 1993). Obrien entirely destroys the line between fact and fiction and shows that fiction can often be truer than fan fact, particularly in the case of the Vietnam War (Kaplan,