I would like to explore the concept of love, the dichotomy of the masculine/feminine perspective and how it relates to the two short stories. Also I will explore the ideas of “phantoms” or in other words the imaginary idealization and objectification of the characters.
The two stories I have chosen are “The Things They Carried,” written by Tim O’Brien and “Love Letters” written by Patricia Zelver. Both of these stories in some way deal with war and love letters and how these letters affect the main characters. We see varying points of view and different levels of importance placed on the love letters in these two stories, especially by the main characters, Lt. Jimmy Cross and Emily Abbot.
One of the most interesting differences between these two stories is that they both come from opposite perspectives. “The Things They Carried” is told from the male perspective and takes place during the Vietnam War, while “Love Letters” is told from a female perspective and is told some time after World War Two.
In “Love Letters” we have a very interesting view point in that it is brought forward from the past. These letters are shared between Emily (the mother) and her daughter Rebecca. These letters are juxtaposed between their faulty relationship. In these letters Emily has a chance to explore her past and build a relationship with her daughter. The way Zelver allows her characters to examine these letters and the new meaning Emily finds in them we as the reader are privy to the dynamic relationship between soldier and the ideal girl back home.
What I would like to do with this paper is to blend the voices of all of the main characters together and perhaps come up with a more holistic picture of the significance of the...
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...that surrounds them and causes them to objectify each other. In their objectification love is casualty along with the idea of the feminine, in a masculine dominated setting of war.
Works Cited
1. Chen, Tina. “Unraveling the Deeper Meaning…” Contemporary Literature. 39 (1998): 77
2. O’Brien, Tim. “The Things They Carried.” Fiction 100. Ed. James H. Pickering. New Jersey: Upper Saddle River. 2004. 1053-65.
3. Smiley, Pamela. “The Role of the Ideal (female) Reader…” The Massachusetts Review. 43 (2002/3): 602
4. Smith, Lorrie N. “’The Things Men do‘: The Gendered Subtext…” Critique. 36 (1994): 16
5. Wesley, Marilyn. “Truth and Fiction in Tim O’Brien’s…” College Literature.
29 (2002): 1
6. Zelver, Patricia. “Love Letters” Fiction 100. Ed. James H. Pickering.
New Jersey: Upper Saddle River. 2004. 1364-72
Have you ever read short stories by ray bradbury? In this essay i will be taking you through the similarities and differences i found while i was reading the three stories. I will also be discussing the characters and how they helped to give a better picture of the settings. Shall we begin.
works of literature have tremendous amounts of similarity especially in the characters. Each character is usually unique and symbolizes the quality of a person in the real world. But in both stories, each character was alike, they represented honor, loyalty, chivalry, strength and wisdom. Each character is faced with a difficult decision as well as a journey in which they have to determine how to save their own lives. Both these pieces of literatures are exquisite and extremely interesting in their own ways.
5. Roberts, Edgar V., and Henry E. Jacobs. "A Rose for Emily." Literature: an Introduction to Reading and Writing. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/ Prentice Hall, 2008. 76-81. Print.
The novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’ Brien takes place in the Vietnam War. The protagonist, Lieutenant Cross, is a soldier who is madly in love with a college student named Martha. He carries around photos and letters from her. However, the first few chapters illustrate how this profound love makes him weak in the war.
"Unit 2: Reading & Writing About Short Fiction." ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
To begin with, I will begin with a brief summary of both stories in order to better
In conclusion, both stories display the idea of love and how it can be interpreted. In “The Things They Carried” Lieutenant Cross fantasizes about a girl named Martha, who he loves but she doesn’t feel the same way about him. He finds it hard to focus on his duties in the war because he is constantly thinking about her. When he realizes she doesn’t love him the way he loves her, he destroys everything he has of hers. In “Araby” a young boy is infatuated with a girl who he has never spoken to. He is unsure if he would ever speak to her, and when he finally does he is so excited that he misinterprets the conversation. When his plan for getting her to love him back doesn’t go as planned, he doesn’t attempt to move on like Lieutenant Cross, but he is left disappointed.
The story, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is both a story of love and a story of war. But more than either of those types of stories, The Things They Carried is a story of losing one’s innocence. Innocence is the idea of not knowing the horrors of the world. The horrors of war and the horrors of heartbreak. When people are born they are born with an air of innocence, they believe in the good in the world as they do not yet know of the evils. As people grow up they lose their innocence, the learn of violence and of war and of the hate of other people because they are different, they also learn the pain of heartbreak. All of these things tears the innocence away from people, some people lose their innocence younger than others. For Lieutenant
end. This essay will further show how both stories shared similar endings, while at the same time
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