Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
the things they carried tim o'brien rhetorical devices
how to tell a true war story o'brien
the things they carried tim o'brien rhetorical devices
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
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
When the quote says “that part of the story is my own” it must mean O’Brien had taken some true details from personal stories. Could O’Brien taken true information but tried to throw the readers off to keep some privacy for the men the stories were based off? Some of the stories present within the book are completely out of the water. How could O’Brien imagine those ideas up without a base of what actually happened? I believe O’Brien switched the names of the soldiers but kept the stories. If he did the name switching it could emphasize on how the reader could focus on the ideas and situations, not the people. O’Brien would showcase how these situations can affect everyone. Another challenging aspect for me is if the stories are partly true why not honor those written about. Do the soldiers feel shame reading about their failures? O’Brien wrote his novel upon the hopes of helping his PTSD and it could have helped the veterans read and receive help. Along with help the vets it could supply the vets with the honor they
O Brien 's point of view is an accurate one as he himself because he is a Vietnam veteran. The title of the short story is meaningful because it describes each soldier’s personality and how he handles conflict within the mind and outside of the body during times of strife. The title fits the life as a soldier perfectly because it shows the reality that war is more than just strategy and attacking of forces. O’Brien narrates the story from two points of view: as the author and the view of the characters. His style keeps the reader informed on both the background of things and the story itself at the same
Wesley, Marilyn "Truth and Fiction in Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried." College Literature 29.2 (2002): 1. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 2 Dec. 2009.
After reading chapters 17-22, a main theme I felt was guilt among the soldiers due to the death's they caused. Tim O'Brien expresses his sense of guilt many years later, when he tells the reader of his experience with death. "For instance, I want to tell you this: twenty years ago I watched a man die on a trail near the village of My Khe. I did not kill him. But I was present, you see, and my presence was guilt enough." His sense of guilt is so intense, he feels it twenty years later in the safety of his own home. He feels so guilty, he makes up a war story, because earlier in the book, he actually describes how he contributed to this same man's death. His friend, Kiowa, has to keep reassuring O'Brien that his actions
In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the readers follow the Alpha Company’s experiences during the Vietnam War through the telling’s of the main character and narrator, Tim. At the beginning of the story, Tim describes the things that each character carries, also revealing certain aspects of the characters as can be interpreted by the audience. The book delineates what kind of person each character is throughout the chapters. As the novel progresses, the characters’ personalities change due to certain events of the war. The novel shows that due to these experiences during the Vietnam War, there is always a turning point for each soldier, especially as shown with Bob “Rat” Kiley and Azar. With this turning point also comes the loss of innocence for these soldiers. O’Brien covers certain stages of grief and self-blame associated with these events in these stories as well in order to articulate just how those involved felt so that the reader can imagine what the effects of these events would be like for them had they been a part of it.
In “Telling the Truth” by Jon Volkmer, he compares The Things They Carried to another war story. He points out that when O’Brien tells the truth it is more of an individual one instead of the one of an event or group. Which makes sense because in every story he tells the outcome is different. Sometimes from another person or sometimes from himself. Each of his stories is changed based on his perspective and what he remembers, so it makes sense that his truth’s are individual. He also states how O 'Brien spends his time picking the truth apart about war. This could be of a couple different reasons, like his trouble remembering what happened, or how he depicts the truth from fiction. Mr. Volkmer says how O’Brien was always trying to quote on quote “ pull the rug out from underneath the reader” when he was telling a story. It is definitely true that O’Brien was trying to do that throughout the whole novel. If he was doing that, he did a great job because every story he told was believable and it painted a vivid picture in your head about what happened. Then at the end he would just stab you in the heart with something about it not being true or he did not
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.
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.
"Speaking of Courage" in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, is more than a story about a soldier's personal experience of the Vietnam War. It is more than a story about his fight for his country, God, and fellow soldiers, and not to mention his return home. "Speaking of Courage" is not only an allegorical story about the disconnection between Vietnam and the rest of the world, but also an allegory about the disconnection between the soldiers and the life they once led.
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.
Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, expresses his journey throughout the Vietnam War via a series of short stories. The novel uses storytelling to express the emotional toll the men encountered, as well as elucidate their intense experiences faced during the war. The literary theory, postmodernism, looks at these war experiences and questions their subjectivity, objectivity, and truth in a literary setting. It allows the reader to look through a lens that deepens the meaning of a work by looking past what is written and discovering the various truths. O’Brien used the storytelling process to illustrate the bleeding frame of truth. Through his unique writing style, he articulates the central idea of postmodernism to demonstrate the
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.
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
"War is hell . . . war is mystery terror and adventure and courage and discovery and despair and . . . war is nasty (80)." When it all happened it was not like "a movie you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait (211)." O'Brien and the rest of the solders were just ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations. They needed to tell blatant lies" to "bring the body and soul back together (239)." They needed to eliminate the reality of death. As ordinary people they were not capable of dealing with the engulfing realities of death and war therefore they needed to create coping skills. O'Brien approaches the loss of his childhood friend, Linda, in the same way he approaches the loss of his comrades in the war as this is the only way he knows how to deal with death. A skill he learned, and needed, in the Vietnam War.
Behind every war there is supposed to be a moral—some reason for fighting. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. O’Brien relays to the readers the truth of the Vietnam War through the graphic descriptions of the man that he killed. After killing the man O’Brien was supposed to feel relief, even victory, but instead he feels grief of killing a man that was not what he had expected. O’Brien is supposed to be the winner, but ends up feeling like the loser. Ironically, the moral or lesson in The Things They Carried is that there is no morality in war. War is vague and illogical because it forces humans into extreme situations that have no obvious solutions.