Rebecca Porter Professor Ippolito Introduction to Literature February 9‚ 2014 An Analysis of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried‚ the narrator tells the story of a platoon of men serving in the military during the Vietnam War. The narrator of this story follows the men‚ led by Lieutenant Jimmy Cross through the treacherous‚ unknown terrain of Vietnam. As most of us know from stories told by Vietnam veterans‚ including my Uncle Ed who was a Navy Seal
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The Weight of War “The Things They Carried‚” by Tim Obrien In the short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien‚ the experience of the Vietnam War is described through the eyes of American soldiers. The things the soldiers carry are both literal and figurative. While they all carry heavy physical loads‚ they also carry heavy emotional loads‚ composed of grief‚ fear‚ love and longing. Each man’s physical burden underscores his emotional burden. The purpose of this story is to bring
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Essay: O’Brien’s The Things They Carried Throughout Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried true events and emotional truth were intertwined and often confused. War is confusing. It is clear that each person in the story interprets the truth differently. When telling a war story‚ the actual events‚ and the feeling the events create are not the same. The intensity of the emotion differs. Tim O’Brien chooses to express the truth in a war story by embellishing the events that occur. He
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One of the biggest problems in our life is fear. Fear is a problem because it affects everything; we think and say and do‚ all the decisions and the choices we make. For example human fear many things like fear of flying‚ heights‚ death and etc.. In his book the things they carried Tim O’Brien writes but the theme of fear because the soldiers in the Vietnam War were afraid of making the right decisions. Tim O’Brien and his platoon carry the fear of death and the fear of shame.fear is show in this
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experienced many life changing things not just because the things that happened to them but the things they watch happen to others. While in the war there are many things that happens that will stick with people forever like deaths and life threatening injuries. People who have PTSD have many symptoms including flashbacks‚ social isolation‚
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most Americans know that soldiers during the Vietnam War were corrupted by the conditions of the war and left with no choice but to use hard drugs such as heroin in order to cope with their pain. Looking through Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried the troops in his novel were guilty of using hard drugs in order to cope with the war. The Vietnam war was a highly disputed war in the United States many Americans were against the fact that we were participating in this war in the first place. It infuriated
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American women prevalent in rural Vietnam. The women in The Things They Carried‚ Martha‚ Linda‚ Kathleen‚ and the Unknown Girl‚ are all represented as variables of life. Martha represents love and danger‚ Linda is death and maturity‚ and the Unknown girl represents that life always moves forward. By using these women in the story‚ this represents‚ in whole‚ the better side of life‚ as well as the raw truth of war. In the story The Things They Carried‚ Lt. Jimmy Cross carries letters from a woman named Martha
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was too much to bear? Tim O’brien’s novel‚ The Things They Carried‚ is about men in the middle of the Vietnam War just trying to survive. These men‚ like all soldiers‚ carried many things ranging from the physical items of war to the emotional and mental weight that comes along with the horrors of war. “They carried all they could bear‚ and then some‚ including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.”(O’brien‚7) I believe in this novel‚ O’brien gives many great and detailed
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The Things They Carried‚ author Tim O’Brien lists various people‚ places‚ and things that would prevent him from leaving his life in the United States. He describes “a hallucination” that is filled with an amalgam of people‚ from old high school buddies and cheerleaders with pompoms to Abraham Lincoln and “Jane Fonda dressed as Barbarella” (O’Brien‚ 58). My own list is not as diverse as O’Brien’s‚ primarily listing all the food that I would miss. However‚ both of our lists do share one thing: a representation
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The Things They Carried Ben Cornelius The story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is an enormously detailed fictional account of a wartime scenario in which jimmy Cross (the story’s main character) grows as a person‚ and the emotional and physical baggage of wartime are brought to light. The most obvious and prominent feature of O’Brien’s writing is a repetition of detail. O’brien also passively analyzes the effects of wartime on the underdeveloped psyche
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