“The Things They Carried” Questions a) The main topic of this novel is burdens. O’Brien is writing about what burdens the soldiers and he had to carry throughout war‚ physically and emotionally. One way I know is because of the title- “The Things They Carried.” This title almost summarizes the whole book. O’Brien frequently showed and explained the burdens that were inner conflicts of his and outer conflicts too. In the chapter “The things They Carried‚” O’Brien showed an emotional burden
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1. How did Tim feel about the Vietnam War while he was at college? He opposed it. He began to hate it. Do his actions and language support the idea that he “hated” the Vietnam war? No‚ he was too scared of what people thought to speak up or act like he hated it. 2. What were Tim’s options once he received his draft notice? To go or leave the country. Who did he hold responsible for his situation? Other people who didn’t have to worry about being drafted. Who did he think should go to war instead
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The epigraph in Anna Karenina didn’t make a lot of sense when we first read it. In fact‚ it wasn’t really relevant until midway through the novel. Only once the plot had progressed did the epigraph unlock an underlying theme. The epigraph in For Whom the Bell Tolls is applicable at the very beginning of the novel. For starters‚ the mention of the bell‚ which I assumed to mean a funeral bell‚ brings the theme of death to the forefront of the reader’s mind before the first chapter even starts. Once
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When authors put their pen to the paper to begin writing‚ they express themselves through their words. Through a heavy examination of a story the reader can frequently see that the author has expressed his or her own personal life into these short stories. Tim O’Brien is an American author who has shared his experiences of the Vietnam War through many of his famous works such as “If I Die in a Combat zone‚ Box Me Up and Ship Me Home”‚ “Going After Cacciato”‚ and the work studied here “The Things
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The Things They Carried is a memoir of twenty-two stories about the author‚ Tim O’Brien and his half truth memories of his time as a soldier in the Vietnam War. O’Brien admits in the novel often blurring the line between the real story and the absurd fallacy the names of the characters in the book are those of his comrades the entire collect serves as a self-contained work because it is so loyal to its themes and characters. "The Things They Carried:" This story introduces the reader to O’Brien’s
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Vietnam‚ a war that ended in 1975 was a war about the prolonged struggles between the nationalists forces that were trying to attempt the unification of Vietnam as a country under a government of communism and the United States attempting to delay or stop the spread of communism. To the Americans‚ this war seemed pointless and the Americans saw that there was no way of winning so the government lost the support for this uncalled war. In "The Things They Carried‚" Tim O’Brien wrote a novella about
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On the outside of Yusef Komunyakaa’s "Thanks" is a very hopeless type of story about a young man in the Vietnam War who recounts events in which could have been his last. He gives thanks to certain objects‚ as if they were the reason that he did not in fact get shot‚ or that he didn’t trip over a landmine. The thanks he is giving could be interrupted as thanks to God for these objects‚ or a downright statement of a lack of god in his life or this war. Komunyakaa is making a statement about the war
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In the short‚ story “How to Tell a True War Story” Tim O’Brien‚ the author‚ confuses the reader with his unique idea on how to tell a real story. Despite the fact‚ that O’Brien was drafted to go to the Vietnam War in 1969 he uses his friends and partners’ stories throughout his war years‚ to tell the world that everything about war is mistaken. Throughout his collection‚ The Thing They Carried (1990) he emphases that fear is what motivate soldiers to go to war. Indeed‚ fear drove him; he went to
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In Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo tells the story of a man‚ Joe Bonham‚ who loses everything--his arms‚ legs‚ mouth‚ hearing‚ and nose as a consequence to war. Joe lost every aspect of his life that made him human‚ all but his mind that is; with nothing but his mind left Joe reminisces over various times in his life‚ which occurs in the form of flashbacks throughout the novel. Trumbo’s use of flashbacks aided in upholding a major theme and a major motif of the story. The flashbacks that take
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Stories of war often seem unrealistic when the reader has not experienced anything of the sort. In the story "The Things They Carried" Tim O’Brien tells war stories through a character named Jimmy Cross. With the detail O’Brien uses in his book he must have experienced these events to be able to describe them in such a fashion. The many friendships and personal relationships Jimmy had could have just been O’Brien’s platoon he served with and actual girlfriend‚ possibly with different names. All of
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