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The Hopeless Tone of Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried

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The Hopeless Tone of Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried
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A Hopeless Tone is Created from Personal Experiences Established and weathered authors use certain literary techniques to further enhance the reader’s experience. Tone is one of these techniques, and is easily described as the general character or attitude of a piece of writing. Tim O’Brien’s combat experience in Vietnam led him to suffer from PTSD, and this condition led him to establish a hopeless tone in the first chapter of The Things They Carried. The author’s interview introduces his PTSD caused by his service in the Vietnam War, stating through story telling he would like to release a psychological truth. The other authors within the interview describe unforgettable sights that haunt them forever. Particularly, O’Brien explains that a sense of being in the waste as a soldier, the wastage of life. This defines a hopeless tone that is set into the plot of the novel. Mr. O’Brien shows that one may never see the good in war and give up all faith. O’Brien’s real life experiences cause him to establish a hopeless tone throughout the first chapter of The Things They Carried. O’Brien’s superb word choice draws in the reader that has an overall sense of hopeless in his work of literature. Words such as “emptiness”, “dullness”, and “no sense of strategy” demonstrate the characters feelings that war brings nothing but dissatisfaction. Tim O’Brien shows perfection on the tone of hopelessness. His personal experience caused his writing to reveal such a hopeless tone in his novel. War is now looked as a much bigger demon in eyes due to his work that shows no soldier has the desire to make war the best that it can be.

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