In this book the author Tim O' Brien uses many different little stories to sum of the big picture of war. He focuses in on many different characters, stories, and their specific feelings to help the reader get an actual feel of what he felt. Which he states on pg. 171 " I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer than happening-truth". While O' Briens main connection to the title focus's in on what each soldier physically carried, deeper than that is the soldiers own feelings, doubts, and fears.…
This novel is very different from the others that I have read. Tim O’Brien wrote this book to show how it was at Vietnam and what soldiers have to go thru. However he wrote this book under the genre of fiction because this way he could write things that were not true and still make it billable to the reader. Rather than him just saying things as they are. Perhaps if he told things as they really happen then the reader might not be interested of what was going on. Now the author wrote this book for two reasons.…
As a former president once said " And so, my fellow Americans ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country". Patriotism is found in every country, but it's the occupants of that country that have patriotism towards their own. This loyalty is seen in both "How to Tell a True War Story" and "Soldiers Home". Patriotism to me is one's natural right to show pride in being an American. Patriotism exists on different levels when taking into consideration people's perspective on war.…
He pictures his victim’s whole life, and imagines he was a young student that had just entered the university in Saigon in 1964, avoided politics, didn’t like to fight, and just hoped the Americans would go away. Though out the whole story, O’Brien both, consolidates and tortures himself, by picturing the life of this young dead soldier. He imagines it in such a way, that the Vietnamese soldier ends up being very similar to himself, and by relating to his victim this way, O’Brien grapples with and tries to understand the unpredictability of his own mortality, and is better aware of the horrible nature of the killing. He contemplates the fact of life and death. How the death of this poor soldier will not change one thing and life will go on, leaving him in the past, making his death look irrelevant and…
He feels guilt because of the way the man dies. As he stares at the man, O’Brien thinks about the man’s life before any of the war happened. “It was entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty.”(126). O’Brien didn’t think about anything in that moment. He knew that he had to do his duty, but felt as if he had no control whatsoever. “At night, lying on his mat, he could not picture himself doing the brave things his father had done, or his uncles… He hoped the Americans would go away.”(119) O’Brien shows the man’s perspective of his life. Though he didn’t know who the man was or his life story, he showed the readers his interpretation of his life. It shows that everyone in the war had a life before the war. Everyone has a different way of understanding the war and the way they deal with it after is based on them as well. Though he never met the man, he feels remorse for killing him the way he…
The theme is relevant because not everyone in life might be who they want to be and for all you know they were pressured by society to be who they are. O’Brien’s beliefs are that “If you support war, if you think it’s worth the price, that’s fine, but you have to put your life on the line.” The narrator revealed strongly of his fear on going to war but because of him selecting on protecting his reputation instead he did something he really did not desire to do, he went to war not to protect the country but…
Tim O’Brien writes, “there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.” (71) Exaggeration brings feeling to a war story. The reader not only listens, the reader feels and understands the feeling the writer is giving off. A war story should make the reader feel what is read, not think what is read. Tim O’Brien says “It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.”(71) For a war story to be a true war story, the reader should be able to feel the story inside of them. The reader should react as if the experience the writer went through happened to…
O'Brien himself carried home scars of the war. In the chapters "The Man I Killed" and "Ambush" we find O'Brien struggling to come to terms with his own guilt. He expressed how he almost instantly regretted throwing the grenade that killed that Vietnamese soldier. He then imagined that the young mans life was much like his own. Had he not had writing as a release, O'Brien claimed that he may very well have been paralyzed from this…
It is in this chapter that O'Brien reveals that the only aspect of the novel thus far that hasn't been fabricated is the fact that he did walk through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier. "Almost everything else is invented" (179). However, it must be understood that he is simply bending the truth in order to convey the most feeling and emotion. "I want you to feel what I felt" (178), O'Brien explains. Evidently, there are times when invented war stories communicate his feelings more clearly than anything actual could. For example, "The Man I Killed" is about a VC soldier killed with a grenade by O'Brien. He is overcome by guilt and regret, but later in the book he reveals that he did not kill the man at all. He was simply present at the time of the young man's death. "But my presence was guilt enough I remember feeling the burden of responsibility and grief. I blamed myself" (178). He remembers feeling responsible and blaming himself, so he writes himself in as the one physically responsible for the death. It is much more powerful to tell the story this way; readers experience the guilt he felt even though he wasn't actually responsible. This is the sole purpose of O'Brien's styleto communicate feelings in the most effective and powerful way possible, without regard for…
According to O’Brien, “a true war story is never moral” (O’Brien 68). The war stories that have morals are often fabrications of the truth. The mark of a true war story is the difficulty in telling the difference between what happened and what seems like it happened. The details of a story can be vague, something that cannot be understood, and can still be considered a true war story. Believably of a war story must also be taken into account when discussing its credibility. Some scenarios, O’Brien says, are too far-fetched to be considered true, and yet those are the stories are the ones that could not be further from the truth. The author’s stance on this subject is that, “in many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical.”(O’Brien 71). A war story that is mundane is often times the ones that have falsities in them. As seen by Mitchell Sanders, it is his drive to make the other soldiers believe his story that makes it believable. O’Brien gives an outline of how to tell a proper war story in this chapter, so that the common pitfalls in storytelling can be subverted. He condones the seemingly useless nature of stories by saying that, “a true war story is never moral.”(O’Brien 68). It is less about the quality of the story and more about its accuracy of what seems like it happened, that separates a true war story from one that is…
War makes individuals enter another world that to most appear to be not at all like the old. The life they had is presently gone, which bring these men only an attack of new stresses and bad feelings. These feelings change the way individuals respond and feel. As appeared in the story “The Things They Carried” by the author Tim O'Brien. The brave soldiers all carry overwhelming feelings, yet the heaviest of them all is Guilt. Blame is a weight that the characters cannot escape from; it is something they will live with it the rest of their lives. Jimmy Cross is a good example. He transmits the blame of Ted Lavender's dead not just all through the war; he even brings it on his mind when he returned home. Jimmy's…
It affects the mind and can change a person entirely. O'Brien says that "War is boring"(O'Brien 34). While this is true, others think "It is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love"(Evans 3). Sometimes the troops would feel like they are "fighting two different wars"(O'Brien 63). This can mean many different things including the war of staying alive, trying to stay the same person they used to be, the war of sanity. "O'Brien's soldiers are people who live in extremis"(Evans 2). Somehow these people complete their missions while possibly not wanting to be part of the group and situation entirely. At one point Jimmy thought "all I wanted was to live the lifestyle was born to, a mainstream life"(O'Brien 51). Most soldiers don't want to be in the position they are, even if they disagree, a part of them wants to live a normal life a be at home. War can seem everlasting. "You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end. Not then, not ever"(O'Brien 76). But "in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do"(O'Brien 85). O'Brien knows what war means to him because he experienced it first hand. It takes many qualities to be a living war veteran. They…
One of O?Brien?s stories is ?Church?. This is a true war story because it has nothing to do with the war, but deals with two men?s thoughts on religion. One of the rules O?Brien said is ?A true war story is never about war?(83) proves that this is true. A true war story is about embarrassment, memory, sorrow, and love. (O?Brien) It?s about the land and the hump. An example is in WWII when the U.S.A. dropped the atomic bomb. It?s not about the dropping of the atomic bomb, but about the thoughts and struggles in the minds of the crew who dropped the atomic bomb, or it?s about the kid forty years later who still is affected from the nuclear blast. Now ?Church? is about the soldiers who set up a base of operations for a week in a partly abandoned pagoda. A pagoda is a temple used to worship a god. Two monks live there who were peaceful men. Kiowa, one of the soldiers who carries the New Testament with…
Many authors have written war stories and about the effects of war on a person. Two of these writers are Tim O'Brian and Ernest Hemingway. O'Brian wrote "How to Tell a True War Story"; and Hemingway wrote a short story called "Soldier's Home". Both of these stories illustrate to the reader just what war can do to an average person and what, during war, made the person change. The stories are alike in many respects due to the fact that both authors served time in the army; O'Brian in the Vietnam War and Hemingway in WWI. However, the stories do have differences due to the slightly different themes and also the different writing techniques of the authors.…
O’Brien tells his story when he was in the Vietnam War though books that he has written. For example in “The Things They Carried” there is a character named Tim. One of the interviews from Library of Congress Tim O’Brien states that “he goes back and forth about Vietnam and also about his first girlfriend.” He was in 4th grade when he was in love and that using his girlfriend as an example that Vietnam was not that easy like losing his girlfriend at nine years old. In the story Bob Kiley was known as Rat. O’ Brien points out that Rat that had a good friend with him in the Vietnam War. They both were good soldiers and when Lemon would volunteer Rat would volunteer as well. He lets people know that his friend and he were goofing around like always. Lemon showed Rat that the war can be fun but also very serious. There will be times to goof around and there will be times to be services during the war. He tells people that when they were goofing around they felt like kids again. Lemon and Rat “were giggling and calling each other motherfucker”. They would go a nature hike in the woods and started messing around. They heard a noise and next thing a bomb killed his friend. Rat had taken his friend back with the other soldiers. Hs friend named was Curt Lemon. He told Sander and the other soldiers what happen to Lemon.…