unique flowing narrative. The many characters throughout the book give life to the harsh land of Vietnam‚ adding color to the palette of brown‚ fatigue green‚ and constant rain/blue. Characters like Kiowa‚ who brought compassion to Alpha Company‚ Rat Kiley‚ who brought sanity to Alpha Company before he went mad himself‚ Mitchell Sanders‚ who brought a form of moral code in a place where morals don’t exist‚ Azar‚ who tried to light up a situation with comedy and finally Norman Bowker‚ who could show
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Jeff Jackson Instructor Barbara Manuel English 112 3 March 2013 Shell Shock: A Bloodless Battlefield A storyteller of war‚ Tim O’Brien‚ author of The Things They Carried‚ keeps the reader mesmerized with PTSD stories of the Vietnam War. This novel represents a compound documentary written on accounts of the Vietnam War. Many of the stories in this book encompass various examples of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. There are graphical depictions
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O’Brien offers a tale about Rat Kiley that he guarantees his peruses is genuine: Rat’s companion‚ Curt Lemon‚ is murdered‚ and Rat composes Lemon’s sister a letter. Rodent’s letter discusses her sibling and the insane tricks he endeavored. Rodent trusts the letter is impactful and individual; notwithstanding‚ from Lemon’s sister’s perspective‚ it is improper and exasperating. The sister never composes back‚ and Rat is outraged and incensed. He is left to gather as the sister stays away for the indefinite
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Be careful! Cowards are contagious. The more things they run away from‚ the more their nightmares will transfigure into their host. The stories expressed by Tim O’Brien‚ author of “The Things They Carried” highlights cowardice acts made by several of the characters embodied in the novel. The kinds of cowards found in this book are not found in the typical day to day life. Instead they are only present in war times‚ and commit acts that can be challenged to whether they’re really acts of cowardice
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"When we first got here--all of us--we were real young and innocent‚ full of romantic bullshit‚ but we learned pretty damn quick” (97). This quote was extracted from the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien‚ and exemplifies the power that the war had in exploiting one’s innocence. The Vietnam War drastically altered the soldiers’ American Dreams due to the great abundance of evil which was celebrated throughout the war. One thing that could be agreed on is that lives of the soldiers introduced
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Literary Analysis of The Things They Carried: Metafiction Tim O’Brien brings the characters and stories to life in The Things They Carried. He uses a writing style that brings stories to life by posing questions between the relationship of reality and fiction (Calloway 249). This is called metafiction and it exposes the truth through the literary experience. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction to make the characters and stories in The Things They Carried realistically evocative of the Vietnam
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The irony in “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien is that in the first line O’Brien says that “This is true” (340). And goes into the story of his friend Rat writing a letter to the sister of his friend who recently died. Then goes into how to tell a good war story and proceeds to tell his own experience with Rat Kiley and his friend Lemon. But in the end he says “All you can do is tell it one more time‚ patiently‚ adding and subtracting‚ making up a few things to get the real truth” (349)
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It was sad to read that he died the way he did while he was in the middle of having fun with his best friend‚ Rat Kiley. Rat had to see his best friend blown up by a booby trap right in front of him. Tim O’Brien states they had to “shinny up and peel him off” (295). That would have been really hard for Rat to peel his best friend off from a tree. The whole situation is sad because no one wants to see a close friend of theirs die like that but I was not shocked
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state of death‚ you do not consider how others will feel‚ rather how you feel. In the book‚ O’Brien explains that a time this happened was after Lemon was killed‚ Kiley’s best friend‚ Kiley shot a Viet Cong water buffalo several times. After Kiley shot the buffalo‚ it laid there bleeding but still remained alive. Kiley was distraught over Lemon’s death and so all he wanted was to see something else in the same pain he was going through. This coping mechanism is used when you do not blame yourself‚
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Rat writes a letter to the sister of his friend‚ Curt‚ to inform her of the death of her brother. In this letter‚ Rat goes into detail about the fun times he had with Curt‚ claiming that “he made the war seem almost fun‚ always raising hell and lighting up villes” (O’Brien‚ 1990‚ p. 68). This clearly displays that Rat was not overly concerned with his responsibilities and was just looking to have a good time
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