of the chapter he begins to list what each soldier carried with him literally. O'Brien also includes what…
A platoon of seventeen soldiers from America travel in booby-trap swamps and through the hills of Vietnam. “They been ordered to set ambushes, execute night patrols, and search out and destroy the massive tunnel complexes south of Chu Lai constructed by Viet Cong guerrillas” (McCarthy). On their voyage the men carry something with them; the things they carry have a meaning to each soldier which distinguishes them. The men are not completely prepared to deal with the stresses of war emotionally. The story circles around Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and the burden he feels for the death of Lavender, one of his soldiers. “The Things They Carried” reflects on each soldier and their way of trying to escape from the war. American writer Tim O’Brien had many outstanding works including “The Things They Carried”. This work illustrates O’Brien’s use of style,…
In Bradbury’s story, There Will Come Soft Rains, he personifies many objects in the house. He described the cleaning animals as having eyes and sucking at dust. He personified the clock as being afraid that no one would hear it. At one point he describes the house as being self protective and bordering on paranoia. The door also recognized the dog’s voice. By giving the house and all of its machines a personality, he makes the house appear to be the main character.…
In The Rock and the River, by Kekla Magoon, “all it takes for evil to exist is for good people to do nothing” is a prominent theme. An example of this is when Bucky had just been brutally beat and arrested by the police. The police did this in broad daylight in front of everyone including Maxie and Sam. “People on the street began going about their business again. The radio blasted, covering the silence of disbelief, of resignation.” (pg. 68). This quote demonstrates the theme because it shows that if the people watching the violence happen (aka the “good people”) do nothing, then the cop’s racism (aka the evil) would continue existing.…
The Elusiveness of War and the Tenuousness of Morality in Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," "How to Tell a True War Story," and "Style"…
In the novel The Things They Carried the young soldiers are afraid of seeming weak. O’ Brien didn’t want to go to war. He was even considering fleeing to Canada. O’ Brien eventually decided to go because he was afraid of seeming like a coward to his family and town. He went to war out of fear of appearing weak to his peers. He believed it would be shameful if he didn’t go to the war. The soldiers in the novel were cautious to show any sign of fear. They were in an unpredictable and strange environment for an unknown cause, for most of them. They were young and proud and the last thing the tough, ammunition charged soldiers, wanted is to show how afraid they were.…
In Jim O’Brien The Things They Carried the book is introduced as a war story, but quickly shifts to a love story. The shift from the first war story that the author tells us to the first love story is surprising to someone who was expecting the whole book to be a collection of short stories. Usually, in a book, it is not likely that there would be a change in the narrator as well as time period chang all at once. So this is why some people believe that this novel is a love story or a war story.…
In “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien takes us back to the Vietnam War. He demonstrates to the reader that not only does each United States soldier carry something physical with them, but they also carry an emotional burden as well. What each man carries is a combination of thoughts, emotions, and past experiences.…
The symbols in The Things They Carried help to make the text more meaningful and further communicate the theme the novel displays. One of the symbols, the dead Vietnamese soldier, represents the horrors of war and what soldiers have to experience on the battlefield. Although it was never completely clarified whether O’Brien did or did not kill the man, the guilt he relays through the text shows that he does not want to be in war, but it is expected of him to kill others since he is involved. He does so to prevent scorn from society upon his return. The author copes with the death of the Vietnamese soldier as he does with others throughout the novel; he fantasizes about what kind of person the soldier was, what he did before the war, and what he will do after. He creates the soldier’s life in his mind, saying that “After his years at the university, the man I killed returned with his new wife to the village of My Khe, where he enlisted as a common rifleman with the 48th Vietcong Battalion” (O’Brien, 130). The man is a symbol of who the author hoped to be instead of who he was at war.…
In Conclusion O'Brien's overall purpose for writing the book “The Things They Carried” is to tell his stories that will give the reader a great understanding of vietnam but also help Tim cope with the…
Throughout the novel, The Things They Carried, O’Brien illustrates the tragic impact of war on a soldier. In this novel O’Brien recounts numerous stories of innocent soldiers getting their minds corrupted by the horrors of war. He tries to convey the burden the soldiers had to carry throughout the war. The title, The Things They Carried, is symbolic of the emotional load the soldiers carry during the Vietnam War. O’brien tries to tell us that the mental burden carried by the soldiers far outweigh the physical load, and he authenticated that through his war stories about Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Jimmy Cross, Kiowa, Curt Lemon, and many more. He successfully paints the image that the physical load each man carried just underscores their emotional…
In the end people have the power to influence and change other people’s lives, in The Color of Water by James McBride; James learns many important life lessons from the people around him and in his life and how to be a leader not a follower. Perhaps the greatest influence on James is the Chicken man who teaches James to get an education, to help James to find determination in life, and not to get in to a man and woman argument if you’re not in it with them.…
In novel The Things They Carried, a central theme is reality vs fiction, believe bs disbelief, O’brien creates an unsteady relationship with the reader that makes one question even the most minute details and descriptions. At it’s core The Things They carried is a work of fiction, however this passage is more, it's a piece that teaches a class what makes fiction, rather than simply telling them a moralistic war story. While O'brien's use of fictional techniques such as, jargon, second person voice, verisimilitude, metafiction, and repetition within the passage are what create the sense believability, being able to recognize the use of such techniques is ironically also what allows the reader to critically analyze and question the reliability of O’Brien. In the end fragments and segments held together by a single narrative voice with the intention of “getting it right” progress the overall war story, as well as the commentary on truth.…
In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien uses fiction to create his own war story. His feelings and experiences are expressed through less than true events.…
In both The Things They Carried and Speaking of Courage, O’Brien includes death, guilt, and descriptions of the things people carry with them. Even though they all are about the same topic, each chapter gives the reader a different perspective of how people deal with war, during or after. Each person had to deal with each of the topics, but how they did so was always different. O’Brien tries to show people life after war may be just as difficult as life during…