Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried portrays the struggles of soldier’s in war. The novel ultimately is a way for the author to cope with death and keep the memories of his platoon alive. Susan Wittig Albert writes:
“Storytelling is healing. As we reveal ourselves in story, we become aware of the continuing core of our lives under the fragmented surface of our experience. We become aware of the multifaceted, multichaptered ' I ' who is the storyteller. We can trace out the paradoxical and even contradictory versions of ourselves that we create for different occasions, different audiences... Most important, as we become aware of ourselves as storytellers, we realize that what we understand and imagine about ourselves is a story. And when we know all this, we can use our stories to heal and make ourselves whole.”
Tim O’Brien portrays himself as an author, narrator, storyteller, and character throughout twenty-two vignettes. Each perspective helps him achieve his purpose for writing the novel.
Tim O’Brien, as the author, is able to explore the horror of the war zone through his novel. Each vignette is a coping mechanism that helps heal him; he is able to keep the fallen’s memory alive through stories. In Ambush, O’Brien writes, “Even now I haven’t finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t” (134). The tragedies of war have left a lasting mark on him. Several men, including Norman Bowker, request a short story; some want to be portrayed as a hero, and others are simply looking to find peace. Bowker, unlike O’Brien, has trouble rejoining society. The author writes, “‘Speaking of Courage’ was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in th...
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...The author writes, “But this too is true: stories can save us. I’m forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed, and an old man sprawled beside a pigpen, and several others whose bodies I once lifted and dumped into a truck. They’re all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world” (225). Tim O’Brien as the storyteller is the most important role, as it offers him the most comfort when coping with loss.
Works Cited
"Storytelling Is Healing." The Passive Voice. N.p., n.d. Web. Feb. 2014.
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O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: First Broadway, 1998. Print.
Created: 02/13/14 02:23 PM
Tim O'Briens' Perspective and Statements in Regard to Storytelling and Relationship to the Truth in The Things They Carried
Tim O’Brien states in The Things They Carried that “Stories are for joining the past to the future” (36). Early in this novel, O’Brien adds “I sit at this typewriter and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking into the deep muck of a shit field, or Curt Lemon hanging in pieces from a tree, and as I write about these things, the remembering is turned into a kind of rehappening” (31). In this quote O’Brien foreshadows some of the approaching short stories. But the recurring struggle that O’Brien goes through when reliving these awful memories causes him to describe the details in a way you will feel what he has felt. Making the past with the present and the truth blurred with the fiction. His purpose, is to write about his struggle to write these war stories, including his obsession to continue to write them. O’Brien uses himself to illustrate the emotional and physical weight of his obsession to write war stories about Vietnam.
Tim O'Brien especially expresses how he felt during a dire war situation. "For a long time I lay there all alone, listening to the battle, thinking I've been shot, I've been shot: all those Gene Autry movies I'd seen as a kid. In fact, I almost smiled, except then I started to think I might die." This quote helps contribute to the overall theme of the book because it demonstrates O'Brien's thought process in thinking he was about to die.
The truth behind stories is not always what happened, with each person’s perspective is where their truth lies. At the beginning of the novel, you start to think that it is going to be the same old war stories you read in the past, but it changes direction early. It is not about how the hero saves the day, but how each experience is different and how it stays with you. From his story about Martha, to how he killed a man, each one is so different, but has its own meaning that makes people who have not been in war, understand what it is like. Tim O’Brien can tell a fake story and make you believe it with no doubt in your mind.
The title of the book itself couldn’t be more fitting. The Things They Carried is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Tim O'Brien about soldiers trying to live through the Vietnam War. These men deal with many struggles and hardships. Throughout this essay I will provide insight into three of the the numerous themes seen throughout the novel: burdens, truth, and death.
Tim O’Brien is doing the best he can to stay true to the story for his fellow soldiers. Tim O’Brien believed that by writing the story of soldiers in war as he saw it brings some type of justice to soldiers in a war situation.
The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, is not just a book about what soldiers carried during the Vietnam War, but a book about what they carried with them for the rest of their lives. The book also describes the traumatizing deaths which caused many soldiers to start to blame themselves.
The setting within the country of Vietnam influences the characters to evolve adaptations to cope with the theme of death and isolation, which assists their journey in retaining the peace within their souls. One of the most noticeable coping mechanisms which develop throughout the novel is through the main character of Tim O’Brien, in his transformation from a soldier to a writer. This coping method develops the behavior of Tim’s character by allowing him an escape from the horrors of war, and the themes that surround it such as death. It is true that stories are written to remove the burdens that soldiers carry in their memories. However it allows characters such as Tim to “keep dreaming Linda alive. And Ted Lavender … and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed” (213). These characters represent the people taken away from him due to the theme of death. Even though Linda was not part of the war, she becomes part of the fantasy world he had creates through his
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 Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (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.
One of the later entries in the book called “Good form”, helps alleviate the suspicion of dishonesty in the stories by bluntly telling the reader that all the other entries are a mix of both fact and fiction. O’Brien feels the need to make up parts of his stories due to the fact that he wants the reader to experience emotions as opposed to mental visuals. He describes these emotion-laden scenes as “story-truth” due to the fact that they are part story and part truth. The parts that are only for emotio...
Michael White and David Epston are the leading figures of narrative therapy which gained popularity in the 1990’s (Biggs & Hinton-Bayre, 2008). In developing narrative therapy White and Epston were influenced by many of their peers. These peers included lea...
O’Brien shows that imagination can help us do things that could not be done in real life. According to Tobey Herzog, “O’Brien invents a soldier-author narrator, also named Tim O’Brien, to tell stories of his life and Vietnam War experiences, to relate war stories told to him by other soldiers, and to comment on the art of storytelling…” (104). Tobey Herzog is saying that O’Brien was able to invent another version of himself in the novel so he would be able to tell stories of his life and also other characters’ life stories. O’Brien tries to invent something that he has never done before. When O’Brien got drafted to the war, he did not want to go. He uses his story chara...
The Things They Carried is a classic because it approaches the gruesome subject of war in a way that is truly unique and honest. O’Brien’s unique point of view results in a book that is revered by the majority of its readers. “Now and then, when I tell this story, someone will come up to me afterward and say she liked it. It’s always a woman. Usually it’s an older woman of kindly temperament and human politics. She’ll explain that as a rule she hates war stories; she can’t understand why people want to wallow in all the blood and gore. But this one she liked” (pg.65-66). Many soldiers come home from war and try to hide the brutality of war from the rest of the population. Tim O’Brien allows readers in on the horrid truth of war! Throughout the novel, Tim O’Brien depicts how his fellow platoon members are held captive by their subconscious minds. “He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back. He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt. He put the rifle muzzle up against the mouth and then shot the mouth away. Nobody said much. The whole platoon stood there watching, feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn’t a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo” (pg.75). It would be impossible for someone who has not experienced war to understand how the subconscious mind can imprison a soldier. However, O’Brien’s stories are so vivid that the reader feels that he or
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