"It’s the mountains … The rock … the fog … The trees … The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks."(O’Brien,71) In the chapter How to Tell a True War Story, from the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, the land itself is out to crush the soldiers, the rocks, the trees, everything. This chapter is full of many stories all central to the novels theme of respective truth. However, the metaphor used to describe the "spookiness" of Vietnam show cases the soldiers feelings toward the land they were sent to fight in. A nation where they didn’t belong that was trying to expel them like some kind of virus. Even back in America the soldiers may think they are safe, but they will be crushed by another land. America is not alive like Vietnam is, but as Allen Ginsberg points out in his poem America, America is a machine that destroys all opposition or outward thinking. The soldiers when they got home expected a Homecoming Hero’s Parade, but instead they were met by war protesters screaming caustic poison. These two perspectives, although separated by many years, are parallel in their description of a hostile land . The only difference being that by the time the soldiers came home Ginsberg had left his mark and had succeeded in changing the status quo. Bloodied and bruised, the feelings carried by the soldiers in the war are equal to those bore by Ginsberg. Both Vietnam and America beat and battered a few young men that were only doing as they were told to,or as they felt they had to. All the trauma they had endured on both sides created turmoil in America for many years to come. When coming of age in a chaotic environment it does not matter which side of the fence one lies on. All of the churning turmoil weighs on impressionable mi...
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...d found a permanent way out.(O’Brien,149). Just as Ginsberg was rejected as a young man growing up in 1950’s America, so too were many of the returning soldiers rejected by a war tired 1960’s United States. In truth the soldiers desires were simple, no parades were needed(O’Brien,150). “I want … For our country to love us as much as we love it!”(Rambo:First Blood) Acceptance is all anyone could ever ask for, it is as human of a need as food or water.These works are a social prescription to a society that does not accept its members.
Works Cited
O'Brien, Tim. "How to Tell a True War Story." The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. 64-81. Print.
Ginsberg, Allen. "America." Howl, and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Pocket hop, 1956. 39-43. Print.
Rambo: First Blood. Dir. Ted Kotcheff. Tri-Star Pictures, 1985. DVD.
Many times readers lose interest in stories that they feel are not authentic. In addition, readers feel that fictitious novels and stories are for children and lack depth. Tim O’ Brien maintains that keeping readers of fiction entertained is a most daunting task, “The problem with unsuccessful stories is usually simple: they are boring, a consequence of the failure of imagination- to vividly imagine and to vividly render extraordinary human events, or sequences of events, is the hard-lifting, heavy-duty, day-by-day, unending labor of a fiction writer” (Tim O’ Brien 623). Tim O’ Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” examines the correlation between the real experiences of war and the art of storytelling. In O’Brien’s attempt to bridge the gap between fiction and non-fiction the narrator of the story uses language and acts of violence that may be offensive to some. However some readers agree that Tim O" Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story" would lack authenticity and power without the use of crude language and violence.
‘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).
...en’s novel shows the soldiers’ innermost thoughts and concerns and internal conflicts which appear to outweigh the communist cause. The Things They Carried demonstrates the soldiers’ opposition to the war. However, the U. S. remained focused on preventing a communist takeover. The United States enormous political power affected history
In A Hard Rain Fell: a G. I. ‘s True Story of The War in Vietnam, John Ketwig tells a visceral account of a young man’s odyssey from the country roads of upstate New York to the jungles of Vietnam. It is a contrast of cultural upheavals and the harsh realities of war, from rock and roll philosophy and Beatlemania to the sight of seeing a child being burned by a napalm bomb. John Ketwig presents this powerful story in the form of a memoir in which he shares his arguments and analysis as being a front-line soldier as well as being an average high school teenager. This paper will look at Ketwig’s story as well as tales
Another unique aspect to this book is the constant change in point of view. This change in point of view emphasizes the disorder associated with war. At some points during the book, it is a first person point of view, and at other times it changes to an outside third person point of view. In the first chapter of the book, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien writes, “The things they carried were largely determined by necessity (2).
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.
Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried challenges the reader to question what they are reading. In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story”, O’Brien claims that the story is true, and then continues to tell the story of Curt’s death and Rat Kiley’s struggle to cope with the loss of his best friend. As O’Brien is telling the story, he breaks up the story and adds in fragments about how the reader should challenge the validity of every war story. For example, O’Brien writes “you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (69), “in many cases a true war story cannot be believed” (71), “almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true” (81), and “a thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth (83). All of those examples are ways in which O’Brien hinted that his novel is a work of fiction, and even though the events never actually happened – their effects are much more meaningful. When O’Brien says that true war stories are never about war, he means that true war stories are about all the factors that contribute to the life of the soldiers like “love and memory” (85) rather than the actual war. Happening truth is the current time in which the story was being told, when O’Brien’s daughter asked him if he ever killed anyone, he answered no in happening truth because it has been 22 years since he was in war and he is a different person when his daughter asked him. Story truth
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.
...f his stay in Vietnam, he had wished he had never heard that word. He became horrified by this war. The once proud American was no longer so proud of his country. The Vietnam War was not like the movies he saw as a child; “the screams were real, and when men fell down they didn’t get up, and the sticky wet substance splattering against your leg was somebody’s intestines” (Ehrhart, 246). Although he had his family and friends around him upon his return home, it seemed that Ehrhart was alone in “The World.” Unless someone was there, they could not possibly understand the thoughts and memories he had to live with. The gruesome memories from Vietnam had permeated him completely; they engraved into his mind and would undoubtedly scar him forever.
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).
King, Rosemary. "O'Brien's 'How to Tell a True War Story.'" The Explicator. 57.3 (1999): 182. Expanded Academic ASAP.
The soldiers feel that the only people they can talk to about the war are their “brothers”, the other men who experienced the Vietnam War. The friendship and kinship that grew in the jungles of Vietnam survived and lived on here in the United States. By talking to each other, the soldiers help to sort out the incidents that happened in the War and to put these incidents behind them. “The thing to do, we decided, was to forget the coffee and switch to gin, which improved the mood, and not much later we were laughing at some of the craziness that used to go on” (O’Brien, 29).
Throughout Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, a plethora of stories are told concerning the lives of a select number of soldiers in and out of the Vietnam War. In his writing, O’Brien also conveys his own thoughts on the art of storytelling and the nature of stories themselves. In these passages, O’Brien provides a detailed analysis of the challenges of storytelling, the effects of time on memory, the role of imagination in storytelling, the reason for retelling a story, and a story’s purpose and process for the reader.
...g with many individuals, are alienated and in turn, wish for extreme change and even another life. Ginsberg conveys a vital message that carries through to the year 2010 even more. Materialism does not make a person, it is insignificant. What is imperative is the natural world; beauty, individuality, and real human interactions as these are concepts that make an individual.
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness” (Howl, Allen Ginsberg). Why is madness an important theme in post-war U.S. writing? Your answer should demonstrate thorough knowledge of at least two texts studied on this module.