Moralism In Tim O 'Brien's The Things They Carried'

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In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Tim, a veteran who pursued a career as a writer, writes about his multiple experiences and stories about the Vietnam War in which he fought. Although O 'Brien 's book is a post war story about death and battle, it is not considered a traditional-heroic war story, because it is no typical exaggerated and uplifting story that inspires others. Instead, O’Brien’s stories are considered non-traditional and non-heroic because they are true stories with no moral or virtue. This ultimately suggests that stories with morals are lies and stories without morals are true, and in order to assure that O’Brien’s stories are true, he writes about the obscene deaths of his troop members and about a time in which he felt like a coward. Within the book O’brien writes about the obscene deaths of his troop members Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, and Kiowa, to essentially prove that his stories are true and non-heroic. While traditional war stories tend to be uplifting and inspiring to others, O’Brien’s stories of his troop members are not. Instead, the death stories of Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, and Kiowa are obscene and embarrassing because all three soldiers died non …show more content…

O’Brien also states that,” If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted… then you have been made a victim of a very old and terrible lie” (O’Brien, 1990, p. 65). This essentially means that traditional war stories that consist of heros and moral are never actually true. Instead they are stories that later became lies due to exaggerations of the truth. O’Brien argues that his stories about his dead troop members and about his personal experience are true because they have no moral or virtue and because they are also embarrassing. Since these stories are true, then they can’t in any way be traditional, heroic war stories because they are not exaggerated

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