In Vietnam veteran and author Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried the reader is given a list of both the physical and mental items that a soldier has to carry during war. The way O’Brien incorporates these lists into his writing indisputably makes the events and stories conceivable for the reader because each item defines the nature of the men in alpha platoon. O’Brien’s depiction of the men in alpha platoon does more than define each man’s personality but it enables a reader with no knowledge
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Merriam Webster dictionary‚ or by the opinion of an English Professor. Humanity is defined by the individual‚ and so the focus here is on the Kurt Vonnegut’s‚ and Tim O’Brien’s definition of humanity‚ which is characterized by human spirit‚ heart‚ and empathy. In Slaughterhouse-Five and The Things They Carried both Kurt Vonnegut and Tim O’Brien describe the destruction of humanity caused by war. However‚ Vonnegut highlights how powerless in war leads to decimation of humanity within a solider‚ while
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Tim Urban: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator Students who are in college usually have to write a fair amount of papers. A normal student will spread the work out‚ so that if he does a small amount of work in the first week(s) and some heavier working later on‚ everything gets done and everything will stay civil. Tim describes how he would not uphold this system‚ but rather wait until the last moment to do everything and get things done that way. This worked‚ until the day he had to write
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story of Alice fighting against a fearsome monster don’t share similar plots. However‚ Alice and Odysseus both fight against evil forces and the two protagonists parallel each other as well. When reading the epic poem and watching the movie‚ Homer and Tim Burton use similar characters and scenes. In Alice in Wonderland and The Odyssey‚ the identical heroes are called to an adventure to face challenging obstacles and they both share brutal battle scenes. The characters’ personalities in The Odyssey
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Tim O’Brien’s novel‚ The Things They Carried‚ revolves around the frequent theme of courage however‚ his perception of courage is ignorant considering the actual meaning of courage. O’Brien uses courage as an antidote to the physical and moral weakness in the soldiers of Vietnam creating character obsession over his interchangeable perception of courage and weakness. Not going to war when drafted is perceived as weak‚ but O’Brien believes that going to war when one wants to flee is Canada is arguable
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The Things they Carried by Tim O’brien is a series of war stories that lean on the male perspective. If and when a woman appeared in the story‚ O’brien would idealize them as use for the soldiers when they came home with open arms and in hope for more. Women were used as a metaphor of innocents that the soldiers have to release to help for all the memories and horrors of the war. The innocents and fantasies of the book from the soldiers perspectives were used to either discriminate the women‚ or
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The theme that war changes a person is evident throughout almost every short story in the book The Things They Carried. Some are changed for the better‚ and some‚ not so much. Tim O’Brien used the characters he has built up to show the effects of war on different people. Out of the many themes included in this book‚ this is a very important one. Any situation will change you if you keep at it long enough‚ and that is just what happens to each and every person involved in a war. In the very first
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In the first chapter of The Things They Carried‚ “The Thing They Carried”‚ Tim O’Brien uses the motif of intangible weights the men carry and how they have the strength to alter one’s performance and emotional state at war. The intangible weight of Martha’s love is like a barbell Jimmy Cross can never seem to let go of. Continuously carrying extra weight‚ Cross expresses how he "love[d] Martha more than his men" (6)‚ which results in the death of one of his men soldiers Ted Lavender. Cross’s love
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The article “The Changing Face of the American Family” by Tim Stanley focused on the topic of how the American family has changed in the past century. Stanley discusses the “nuclear family‚” which is a family centered around two parents. The nuclear family was forged by the unique economic and political circumstances of the 1950’s‚ was undermined by social revolution in the 1960’s and was revived as an ideal family in the 1970’s due to the deceptively rosy view of the past (Stanley 11). The idea
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In the novel‚ The Things They Carried‚ the narrator is revealed to be obedient yet a sensitive character. We see Tim O’Brien as an obedient person in the chapter Ambush. He explains how it was just instinct for him to throw the grenade at the man. “I had already pulled the pin on a grenade. I had come up to a crouch. It was entirely automatic.” (page 126). This quote shows that when he saw the man‚ with a weapon‚ walking on the trail‚ he only did what he was trained to do which was to the man. However
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