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Analysis essay the things they carried
The things they carried final exam essay
Analysis essay the things they carried
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O’Brien wanted people to see that war isn’t full of heroes and glory, but more of evil and gore. His book is different from the majority of other war stories. It doesn’t focus on the typical heroic/cowardly characters because in a war there aren’t simply heroes or cowards. Actions that may seem heroic at first are often done out of fear of being judged by other soldiers, and what is seen as cowardly might be the bravest thing for the soldier himself. By this and many other stories O’Brien shows the horrible effects the war has on the soldiers, how the innocent, young boys drastically change. For example, in one of the stories, Rat Kiley talks about Mary Anne who changes from an innocent girl into a ruthless killer. “You come over clean and you get dirty and then afterward it’s never the same”. (109) Instead of stereotypical war heroes, the soldiers in O’Brien’s book are just ordinary people with normal fears and desires which makes it easier for the readers to see the not-so-glorious reality of war.
Many things the soldiers do and look heroic are actually done because they’re too afraid to be judged by their friends. When Tim has to decide if he wants to go to the war or escape to Canada. The fact that people could think he’s a coward greatly influences his decisions. In the beginning, Tim thinks that a person shouldn’t use courage so there is enough saved up when it’s needed. In “On the Rainy River” he realizes that’s not true because even though he’s been saving up courage all his life, it’s not enough to make the decision he thinks is right. Throughout the book O’Brien, explains that courage has to be taught by life, it’s not something people either are or are not born with or something people can “save up”. He thinks that if ...
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...es many things that might seem untraditional or inappropriate for a war story. The fact that he uses no war heroes is a big difference from most of the books that talk about war. Also, he doesn’t try to make war to look honorable. His stories aren’t uplifting, but they’re not really sad either. Most of the time they seem kind of unsettling which, in fact, makes them more believable. O’Brien’s stories don’t happen just during war and aren’t only about war because “To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace.” (77) There isn’t just one certain type of story that could be called a war story, as well as there’s not just one specific way to tell a war story. The fact that O’Brien’s characters aren’t the typical heroes people expect, actually makes it somehow easier to empathize with their feelings and helps understand what the war’s really like.
Before O’Brien was drafted into the army, he had an all American childhood. As talked about “His mother was an elementary school teacher, his father an insurance salesman and sailor in World War II” (O’Brien). He spent his tour of duty from 1969 to 1970 as a foot soldier. He was sent home when he got hit with a shrapnel in a grenade attack. O’Brien says as the narrator, “As a fiction writer, I do not write just about the world we live in, but I also write about the world we ought to live in, and could, which is a world of imagination.” (O’Brien)
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
...r because it seems impossible to reconstruct an event from this objective point of view. Maybe the point of telling stories is not trying to recreate the reality of a past event, but it is the message that matters because that might be in the end the only thing that does not necessarily depend on single details of the story, but on the overall picture of an event. That is why to O’Brien another important component of a war story is the fact that a war story will never pin down the definite truth and that is why a true war story “never seems to end” (O’Brien, 425). O’Brien moves the reader from the short and simple statement “This is the truth” to the conclusion that, “In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nohting much is ever very true” (O’Brien, 428). These two statements frame the entire irony of the story, from its beginning to its end. Almost like the popular saying “A wise man admits that he knows nothing.”
"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.
Tim O'Brien's The Things they Carried put both my logic and emotions to great test. As it is a novel composed of war stories, one may automatically assume that reading The Things They Carried would be an enlightening endeavor, and an educational experience. However, I never thought that a book could captivate me the way that the stories in this novel have.
The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger once said “Perjor est bello timor ipse belli”, which translates to: “the dread of war is worse than war itself”. With this quote, Seneca identifies that war has both its physical and mental tolls on its participants. The psychological and emotional scars of war do much more damage to a solider than the actual physical battles. Tim O’ Brien repeats this idea many years later in his novel “The Things They Carried”, by describing how emotional burdens outweigh the physical loads that those in war must endure. What keeps them alive is the hope that they may one day return home to their loved ones. Yet, the weight of these intangible “items” such as “grief, terror, love, longing” overshadow the physical load they must endure since they are not easily cast away.
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.
O’Brien takes time to develop all the characters in the book. Some he develops fully in one chapter and by the end he shows us there demise. Others O’Brien chooses to develop slowly throughout the book. picking those that people can relate to, who truly show what war could do to a person. Henry Dobbins was the tough guy that we all know but who truly had a sweet inside and believed in being nice to everyone and live on respect. Well on the other hand Norman Bowker was the good kid who wanted nothing more but the approval of his father and blamed everything that went wrong on themselves. In the end when he felt like he didnt get that approval that he wanted for. So he stayed lost and searching (out more).
...ien writes this story in a completely non traditional way and manages to create a whole new experience for the reader. He takes the reader out of the common true, false diameters and forces the reader to simply experience the ultimate truth of the story by reliving the emotional truth that the war caused him. Although this may be a bit challenging for the reader, it becomes much easier once the reader understands the purpose for the constant contradictions made by O’Brien. The difference between “story-truth” and “happening-truth” is that “story-truth” is fictional, and “happening-truth” is the actual factual truth of what happened. The “story-truth” is the most important when it comes to O’Brien, and understanding his work. It is meant to capture the heart and mind of the readers and take them on a journey through war with the O’Brien, as he experienced and felt it.
O’Brien has many characters in his book, some change throughout the book and others +are introduced briefly and change dramatically during their time in war and the transition to back home after the war. The way the characters change emphasises the effect of war on the body and the mind. The things the boys have to do in the act of war and “the things men did or felt they had to do” 24 conflict with their morals burning the meaning of their morals with the duties they to carry out blindly. The war tears away the young’s innocence, “where a boy in a man 's body is forced to become an adult” before he is ready; with abrupt definiteness that no one could even comprehend and to fully recover from that is impossible.
The Things They Carried is a funny little book in the sense that it isn’t told how most books are. It goes from war to camping on the borderline of Canada, back to war, and then into present day times. It works marvelously well, showing you what actually happened and then what he thought about what happened and what he could have done to change the outcome. There are many things that I think people can learn from his experiences in the Vietnam war and the way he tells those stories and lessons really bring you along for the ride.
He states that as a soldier, there is so much to soak in from war scenes that it all becomes a muddled mess. Therefore, the story of the moment can be different from each soldier’s perspective due to the parts where each man puts in his own ideas. This leads to some speculation as to whether or not O’Brien’s stories are true or false.
In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, numerous themes are illustrated by the author. Through the portrayal of a number of characters, Tim O’Brien suggests that to adapt to Vietnam is not always more difficult than to revert back to the lives they once knew. Correspondingly the theme of change is omnipresent throughout the novel, specifically in the depiction of numerous characters.
"All that crap about how if we had a pussy for president there wouldn't be no more wars. Pure garbage. You got to get rid of that sexist attitude."
His unique storytelling combined personal events with fiction. This allowed him to write about a controversial war and have the book become a critically acclaimed book. In an interview, O’Brien said that he “wanted to write work of fiction that would feel to the reader as if this had occurred or, in a way, is occurring as I read it” (“Looking Back”). He achieved his goal by inserting personal experience; it made the books more relatable for the audience. Hearing about the Vietnam War in a social studies class is very different than reading a Vietnam War book written by a veteran. Social studies provided facts while storytelling provided emotions and thoughts. Placing himself in the narrative also helped to obscure the distinction. But in the books that he did not insert himself, his exploration of the purpose, obligation, and courage also helped to blur the line. His personal experience made a fictional story, Going after Cacciato felt realistic. Even though events in the novel did not take place, the characters actions and thoughts made it feel real. Despite his unique storytelling, he was unable to write a true war