War is mutilation, blood, death, and agony and results of war are never pleasing even to those who had won that war. According to a quote said by Dalai Lama,”War is monstrous. Its very nature is one tragedy and suffering.” Not only does it shred a country's economy but also the people living in it, mentally and physically. When innocent boys are pulled away to represent their country, they have no idea what they are getting into. They leave home full of enthusiasm for life and a desire to serve their country nobly, but it is not long before they realize that war is more horrifying than they could have imagined.
In “The Thing They Carried” by O’Brien uses the physical objects that soldier took to show their emotional loads they carry while fighting in the battle field. Most of the soldiers were barely in their twenties, who had no perspective on how to rationalize killing. They are just kids who were forced by the country or parents or by some old wise people like one in “The Lottery” to fight for the country. Among the things the men carry are guilt, cowardice and hope of getting out alive. War never
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Everyone make mistakes in life and wars fought are the deadliest and the biggest mistakes that humans had made which should never be repeated again in future. So by telling of the effects and cruelty that war brings, a true war story always gives a message to not repeat this again. Learning from World War 1 , U.S. was not willing to take part directly in World War 2 until Japan forced them. A true war story tells about stern effects of war and gives message to not to engage in war. War stories are not like fairy tales which always end in happiness. It is the dark and rough reality telling about the cruelty that world had faced in earlier years. The only message each war story shouts is to not repeat it again. If we do not put end our ego and greed there is no way to stop these
For young people, the Vietnam War is a thing of the past and they can
In "the things they carried", author Tim O’Brien tries to teach readers that war changes people, by using baggage as a symbol throughout the book. Ultimately, "the things they carried" is literally built on a foundation of the things they carried. Whether it’s the way Jimmy Cross uses the pebble to escape from his duties as a soldier. Or the way that they all look up to the pantyhose as an almost godly relic. All the way to Norman Bowker finally realizing that courage comes from within, not from winning the Silver Star. These things, made up the soldiers attributes, made up the soldiers’ persona, made up the soldier. But they didn’t stop at the soldier; certain items characterized all the soldiers as a collective group. It even went as far as to describe an entire group by the things all of them carried, of course being the green berets. There were no single green berets just a group; nobody made an effort to distinguish one from another. Like the way we make no effort to name each and every cell in our body, they are just smaller pieces that make up one entity.
O'Brien's repeated use of the phrase "they carried" attempts to create a realization in the reader that soldiers in wars always carry some kind of weight; there is always some type of burden that servicemen and women will forever hold onto both throughout the war and long after it has finished. The specification of what the soldier bear shows that the heaviness is both physical and emotional and in most cases the concrete objects carried manifest into the continued emotional distress that lasts a lifetime (sentence about what they carry from novel) "The Things They Carried" emphasis this certain phrase in order for those that do not have the experience of going to understand the constant pressure of burdens they are under. O'Brien draws on
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.
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.
What is war really like all together? What makes war so horrifying? The horror of war is throughout All Quiet on the Western Front. For example Albert says the war has ruined them as young people and Paul agrees. “Albert expresses it: "The war has ruined us for everything." He is right. We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.” (Remarque, Chapter 5). The way the war has affected each soldier has changed them forever. The boys who were once school boys will never be the same.
The Vietnam War was a challenging time for soldiers both physically and mentally. They often didn’t have a choice on whether they were going to war due to the drafting system that had been in place. Many had tangible and intangible things that they carried with them for the sake of their sanity or their job in the unit. The chapter, “The Things They Carried”, in the novel The Things They Carried, captures this immaculately. The author, Tim O’Brien, speaks of the things each man within his unit carried with him. Each man did not just carry tangible objects with him, but also intangible objects as well .
In the beginning chapter, O’Brien rambles about the items the soldiers carry into battle, ranging from can openers, pocketknives, and mosquito repellent to Kool-Aid, sewing kits, and M-16 assault rifles. Yet, the story is truly about the intangible things the soldiers “carry”: “grief, terror, love, longing. shameful memories (and) the common secret of cowardice” (Harris & O’Brien 21). Most of the soldiers did not know what the overall purpose was of fighting the Vietnamese (Tessein). The young men “carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing”.
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
The word “War” sends shivers through many people because of the effect war has on individual groups or people, minorities, soldiers and the society.
War is one of the most tragic things in our world today. It is even sadder that usually it
While the natural for Tim O 'Brien 's “The Things They Carried" is to write about the physical objects each soldier carried with them in war, the correlation to internal 'things they carried ' were much more significant, and including such things as doubts and fears they had within them.
The narration of real events blended with fictional additions, and vice versa, is inconsequential compared to how the moral of each story resonates with the reader. Plots and ideas get made up in order to “get at the real truth” (O’Brien 81). The ““story-truth” has little to do with the reality of war. Instead, the onus is on the reader to determine the value of the work in her own life, to make sense of the connections arising from intense conflict” (Smith 116). The stories become true depending on the varying emotional response of the reader, coming alive under the canopy of personal experience and individual reaction. It is dependent on the reader to tease out the moral of each vignette, “like the thread that makes the cloth, […] unraveling the deeper meaning” (O’Brien 74). A true war story, like those within The Things They Carried, cannot be taken at face value. They are far more profound than just being about war. “It’s about love and memory. It’s about sorrow” (O’Brien 81). A true war story is not true at all, unless, the reader is able to identify the different personal, emotional truths within them; the truth is fictionalized so that it can be accessible to vaster audience of readers, so that it could mean
War has always been something to be dreaded by people since nothing good comes from it. War affects people of all ages, cultures, races and religion. It brings change, destruction and death and these affect people to great extents. “Every day as a result of war and conflict thousands of civilians are killed, and more than half of these victims are children” (Graca & Salgado, 81). War is hard on each and every affected person, but the most affected are the children.
War has been around for centuries. From the time modern civilizations began, war has played an integral part in human history. It shaped the world into the modern world we live in. War has been said to be a great motivator, for example, the Great Wall of China was built to fend off the attackers from the north. However, the negative aspects of war far outweighs any positive effects it might have. The destruction of civilizations, cities and countries, mass killings of men, woman and children alike, the disastrous effect it has on economy and the after effects of war can last for centuries.