Surrealism in The Things They Carried
In the novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, in two of his stories, “How to Tell True War Story” and “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” O’Brien writes about surreal events that are unknown to the average citizens that have never experienced war. Soldiers are forced to go through events that people who have never experienced war could never imagine going through. Soldiers have to risk their lives every day that they're at war to protect U.S. citizens. To defy that, soldiers also spend a lot of their time playing games and joking around. Between playing games, joking around, and facing the obstacles of war come many surreal events that people would think are unconscionable.
In the story,
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Mark Fossie arranges a way to get his girlfriend down to Nam and a big change happens. Fossies girlfriend, Mary Anne Bell, was straight out of high school only seventeen years old. Once she gets there Fossie is the happiest man on earth. Just watching her dance and goof around making him get a grin on her face. She starts to hang around all the men and having a good time. Mary Anne begins to act a little more like the troops by not being afraid to get dirty and become a stronger fearless woman. She goes out with them into the woods, learns how to disassemble and shoot an M16, and to feed/hunt on her own. Then she starts acting less and less like the girl Fossie met on the first day Mary Anne came to visit. In the novel O’Brien says “her body seemed foreign somehow- too stiff in places, too firm where the softness used to be. The bubbliness was gone. The nervous giggling, too. When she laughed now, which was rare, it was only when something struck her as truly funny.” (O’Brien 94-95) which is showing how much the atmosphere there has changed her. War has changed her. The hot days, dirty jobs, and around all the dangerous forest area that could hold the enemies. She is becoming distant of Fossie and a whole new different person. O’Brien also says “In the evenings, while the men played cards, she would sometimes fall into long elastic silence, her eyes fixed on the dark, her arms folded, her foot tapping out a code message against the floor.” Which also shows she had changed. More distant and almost gives off a lost feeling in her eyes. She begins to come back really late at night and sometimes not coming back at all. In the end Mark Fossie approaches her after listening to her beautiful singing and tries to figure out why she has change or why she almost seems to have no interest in him anymore. She
Rat Kiely continues to tell a story about how Mary Anne had an affect on everyone. One day as Mary Anne searches the unknown of Vietnam, she goes missing. Her boyfriend, Mark Fossie is desperate and stunned and decides to go look for her. Suddenly, Mary Anne would show up at base and go missing again. When Mark Fossie goes looking for his girlfriend once again, he sees her. Rat Kiley explains, “‘But the story did not end there. If you believes the greenies, Rat said, Mary Anne was still out there in the dark… Not quite, but almost. She had crossed to the other side. She was part of the land. She was wearing her culottes her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues. She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill’” (page 110). Here, Rat Kiely tells the readers that everyone had to adapt to the environment to survive, and Mary Anne has done just that. In the beginning of the chapter, Kiely talks about how Mary Anne portrayed the perfect girlfriend, sweet and innocent. But the quote displays the change that occurred to Mary Anne. It is implied early on that Mary Anne represents a common soldier which would mean that every soldier had gone through a drastic change to make them who they are. Through the dynamic character of Mary Anne, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, demonstrated to
There are over thirty genres of books in the world. All of stories are told and written in many different forms from written to spoken, action to romance, or fiction to non-fiction. But, all stories have something in common--a theme that is intended to make a difference to the reader. No matter what the story is about, it is centered around a strong theme. The author of The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien., uses a separate theme in each of his vignettes. But, these themes aren't always depicted through truth. "I'm forty-three years old, true, and I'm a writer now , and a long time ago I walked through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier. Almost everything else is invented"(171). O'Brien uses story-truth and happening-truth in The Things They Carried to show a great theme. In certain cases in the book, story-truth shows theme better and happening-truth isn't used and vice versa. In the vignette "The
Exposing the Truth in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong "Dear Mom and Dad: The war that has taken my life, and many thousands of others before me, is immoral, unlawful, and an atrocity," (letter of anonymous soldier qtd. In Fussell (653). Tim O'Brien, a Vietnam War vet, had similar experiences as the soldier above. Even though O'Brien didn't die, the war still took away his life because a part of him will never be the same.
Mark Fossie decided he was going to sneak his girlfriend onto his base in Vietnam. When she arrived, Rat Kiley described her like this, “A tall big-boned blonde. At best, Rat said, she was seventeen years old, fresh out of Cleveland Heights Senior High. She had long white legs and blue eyes and a complexion like strawberry ice cream. Very Friendly, too.” The first couple of weeks, they were always together. They would hold hands and laugh. It was obvious they were in love. She started changing shortly after she began asking questions about everything. She wanted to go into town one day but it was very dangerous because the VC owned the placed. But she kept asking Mark and finally he agreed. She walked right through the whole town without one single hint of fear. As if she wasn’t aware that she was in great danger. Then she began helping with the wounded victims. She wasn’t afraid to get blood on her hands at all. Even the really gross wounds didn’t seem to bother her. Rat Kiley explains, “In times of action her face took on a sudden new compos...
‘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).
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.
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.
Kiley is telling the story to illustrate how all GI's changed in their Vietnam experience. The fact that the main character is a woman drives his point even farther home. She is the very portrait of mainstream, wholesome America; the only thing she lacks is an apple pie. Kiley describes her as "This cute blonde - just a kid, just barely out of high school - she shows up with a suitcase and one of those plastic cosmetic bags." (O'Brien 90) This girl is the antithesis of what one would expect to find in Vietnam. She is pure and innocent. Throughout her time in Vietnam she changes from this image to something very different, she spends less time with her boyfriend, Mark Fossie. Mary Anne hangs around with the Green Berets, who are very different from the other soldiers. Eventually she becomes one of them, marking a total transformation, "There was no emotion in her stare, no sense of the person behind it. But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry. At the girl's throat was a necklace of human tongues. Elongated and narrow, like pieces of blackened leather, the tongues were threaded along a length of copper wire, one overlapping the next, the tips curled upward as if caught in a final shrill syllable." (O'Brien 110) Vietnam changed Mary Anne; it forced her to become something as foreign to America as the war itself.
In The Things They Carried, an engaging novel of war, author Tim O’Brien shares the unique warfare experience of the Alpha Company, an assembly of American military men that set off to fight for their country in the gruesome Vietnam War. Within the novel, the author O’Brien uses the character Tim O’Brien to narrate and remark on his own experience as well as the experiences of his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company. Throughout the story, O’Brien gives the reader a raw perspective of the Alpha Company’s military life in Vietnam. He sheds light on both the tangible and intangible things a soldier must bear as he trudges along the battlefield in hope for freedom from war and bloodshed. As the narrator, O’Brien displayed a broad imagination, retentive memory, and detailed descriptions of his past as well as present situations. 5. The author successfully uses rhetoric devices such as imagery, personification, and repetition of O’Brien to provoke deep thought and allow the reader to see and understand the burden of the war through the eyes of Tim O’Brien and his soldiers.
The novel The Thing They Carried is a compilation of short stories that share underlying themes and characters. One of the stories is called “How to tell a True War Story”. In this story the narrator expands on a central theme of the distinction between truth and fiction when writing a war story. The story, like most of the other stories in the novel jumps erratically between events, which oftentimes creates confusion and a sense of the surreal in the story. Throughout the story the narrator repeatedly shows that when writing a war story the “story truth is truer sometimes than happening truth.”(O’Brien pg. 171) This quotation encompasses the theme and supports it. The narrator’s use of stylistic devices coupled with stories such as “How to Tell a True War Story” and “Good Form” exemplifies how fiction can fully represent the truth whilst the facts fall miserably short.
Through The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien moves beyond the horror of fighting in the Vietnam War to examine with sensitivity and insight the nature of courage and fear. Included, is a collection of interrelated stories. A few of the stories are brutal, while others are flawed, blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. All the stories, however, deal with one platoon. Some are about the wartime experiences of soldiers, and others are about a 43-year-old writer reminiscing about his platoon’s experiences. In the beginning chapter, O’Brien rambles about the items the soldiers carry into battle, ranging from can openers, pocketknives, and mosquito repellent o Kool-Aid, sewing kits, and M-16 assault rifles. Yet, the story is truly about the intangible things the soldiers “carry”: “grief, terror, love, longing… shameful memories (and) the common secret of cowardice” (Harris & O’Brien 21).
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 war was over and there was no place in particular to go" (157). Thoughts of sorrow and loss overwhelm the Vietnam veterans upon their return back home. Crushed from the horror of war, they come back to even bigger disappointments and sadness. Instead of the mellow lives they lead before they left their native country and the presence of warm and caring everyday life, most of them encounter empty beds, cold family ambiance and overall loss. Already physically and emotionally defeated, they find betrayal instead of recuperating trust. There is nothing to nourish their depleted and deprived psyches; they do not find anything to rely on. Even in instances of supportive partners, the inevitable horrors of the war haunt them in sleep or come back to them in daydreaming. They all came back with multitude of disorders, predominately with a post traumatic stress disorder with the common symptoms of recurring nightmares, hypersensitivity, avoidance behavior, and intrusive thoughts, feelings and memories-commonly found in war vets. 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 the 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.
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.
In Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried,” imaginations can be both beneficial and corrosive. This novel consists of story, truth and real truth. Throughout the novel, imagination plays a big role. Tim O’Brien wrote his book about the war, mainly based on his memory of the war. He did not remember every detail of the war, thus he made up some false details to the stories to make it seem more interesting.