oneself‚ have always been omnipresent. From cracking O’Brien to etching a painful scar in my mind‚ pressure from expectations has always led people to make significant decisions‚ yet not all of these decisions are necessarily good. In The Things They Carried‚ O’Brien is faced with the major decision of whether he should partake in the Vietnam War. While making the decision‚ O’Brien mentions how “All those eyes on me- the town‚ the whole universe- and I couldn’t risk the embarrassment. It was as
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In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” the raw realities of the cruel and unforgiving Vietnam War are authentically depicted. Just in the first five paragraphs sex‚ narcotics‚ and death‚ largely controversial topics in this country‚ are reasonably apparent. One character‚ Lieutenant Jimmy Cross‚ may be physically present but conveys every sign of distraction. He seems to be in a more copacetic quarter of his mind. In this quarter he finds elation and comfort when he thinks of the (so he thinks
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Surreal In The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien tends to use surrealism to tell his war stories. What is surrealism? It is a mix between fact and fantasy‚ which makes it bizarre. For example in the chapter How To Tell a War Story he tells three surreal stories. O’Brien tells us how to know when someone is telling a true story and when someone is lying. One of the story is about Mitchell Sanders telling about six men going crazy. They went crazy in the forest because they been up there for days not
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In Tim O’Brien’s story‚ The Things They Carried‚ the way the men idolize their possessions is directly related to the setting of the story. The men face a new and adverse environment when they are sent to Vietnam and carry many different sentimental objects in their packs. Lieutenant Cross holds himself responsible for the loss of one of his men and has his mind set to reform his team and not let the idea of a woman control his thought any longer. It is important to understand how much the setting
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Samantha Schulz Mrs. Nilles English 12-5 05 November 2012 O’Brien’s Theme of Rejection and Disconnect Why does O’Brien use the theme of rejection to convey his experience in war? In the book‚ The Things They Carried‚ Tim O’Brien writes about his experience in the Vietnam War. He uses many themes to show how the war has changed the soldiers and how the citizens perceive the war. Throughout the book‚ he uses the theme of rejection to show the disconnection between the soldiers at war
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There are many different controversies on the information in “The Things They Carried”. Some believe to tell a good story‚ there’s only facts and no truth‚ but some think that there needs to be all fictional elements and no facts to make a good story. A majority of people say that an excellent story starts with facts and adds in other elements like metaphors‚ symbolism‚ and imagery because visualizing the story helps the reader connect to the unfamiliar event. Using imagery is a smart way to engage
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movies. The Things They Carried has a recurring theme of storytelling. It appears in the book in more places than one. And each one of the appearances seems to say something different about how stories are told‚ or how they should be told. In the chapter ¨How To Tell A True War Story¨ for example‚ the narrator is talking about how a war story should be told and what it should consist of. He says on page 67 ¨IN any war story‚ but especially a true one‚ it’s difficult to separate what happened from
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the soldiers in The Things They Carried? The Things They Carried is a book set in Massachusetts but the core of the book is based in Vietnam. A group of Soldiers go to war and Tim O’Brien decides to document the true effects of war but beneath his words‚ there were a lot of factors and double meaning to them. The motif ‘Shame” played a huge part in every character in this book as it was a trait they all shared in common Shame in this context is not necessarily a bad thing as with the power of
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The Weight of The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien makes a very big deal out of the concept of “truth” throughout his novel The Things They Carried; such a big deal‚ in fact‚ that over the course of his work he continually redefines and even contradicts himself as to what “truth” really is. In the chapter entitled “How to Tell A True War Story”‚ O’Brien offers a multitude of criteria that supposedly defines what does and does not make a true war story. O’Brien offers the first commandment for
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Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a very uniquely written book. This book is comprised of countless stories that‚ though are out of order‚ intertwine and capture the reader’s attention through the end of the novel. This book‚ which is more a collection of short stories rather than one story that has a beginning and an end‚ uses a format that will keep the reader coming back for more. Typically‚ a novel contains four basic parts: a beginning‚ middle‚ climax‚ and the end. The beginning
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