Tim O Brien Character Analysis Essay

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As hard as it was to become emotionally invested in the war, afterwards, Tim O’Brien was emotionally altered for the rest of his life. After the war, “[Tim has] seemed to [grow] cold inside,… all the old ambitions and hopes for [himself] sucked away into the mud. Over the years, the coldness [has] never entirely disappeared” (O’Brien 185). War can really change a person as it did to Tim O’Brien. Once an innocent teenager, O’Brien left the war with a bleak outlook on the rest of his life. He felt a part of him died in Vietnam. Tim was not the only one who felt this way. Instead of blaming the Vietnam soldiers for the war directly, “Americans… adopted a comfortable mindset that somehow Vietnam veterans were victims of bad government decisions” …show more content…

Even though the soldiers were treated badly, there was still some sympathy coming from the American people acknowledging that the soldiers were not to blame for the war. Tim notices that, “There [are] times in [his life] when [he can] not feel much, not sadness or pity or passion, and somehow [he blames Vietnam] for what [he has] become, and [he blames] it for taking away the person [he] had once been” (O’Brien 185). Tim did not know what war would be like until he experienced it. His mind and life were negatively affected because of the burden of being directly involved in war. An article titled “The Things They Carried” published in the journal Short Stories for Students, considers the war a tragedy of epic dimensions because of the soldiers’ lives that it negatively changed and the deaths that it caused (Karnow qtd. in “The Things…”). There were really no positive aspects that came out of the Vietnam War. Mens’ lives were so greatly affected by something that they would have never even gotten involved

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