The Things They Carried – Discussion Research 1. “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.” In his stories‚ Tim plays with the truth. He has been doing this since he was a young boy‚ wishing his girlfriend back to life. He realizes that if you try hard enough and are creative enough‚ you can bring the dead back to life in stories. It doesn’t matter whether the stories are exactly true--you can change the name‚ or location‚ or even parts
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The Things they Carried is seen as one of the most honest depictions of the Vietnam War that has ever been written. Tim O’Brien has a way of creating Vietnam around the reader. However‚ despite the clear depiction of war‚ this novel raises the question‚ “What is true?”. Through analyzing this novel‚ it is clear the author believes that the happening-truth of a story is far less important than the emotional-truth. One of the central chapters of the novel is titled‚ “The Man I Killed.” However‚ only
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In Beloved‚ Toni Morrison provides the novel’s characters‚ both major and minor‚ with complex pasts. Beloved is an elaborate and complicated novel‚ in which there are multiple ways to understand the characters’ complex backgrounds. It’s evident that Sethe has a mentally distressing past that continues to haunt her. A quotation that shows the extent to which Sethe is traumatized from her time as a slave is “As for the rest‚ she worked hard to remember as close to nothing as was safe. Unfortunately
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"The Things They Carried" “War is hell‚ but that’s not the half of it‚ because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead” (76). According to Tim O’Brien‚ all of these generalizations about war are the truth. However‚ as O’Brien continuously reshapes readers’ concept of truth throughout The Things They Carried‚ one
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soldiers. It’s different from all the other cliché‚ patriotic war movies. Like Tim O’Brien writes “A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct‚ nor encourage virtue‚ nor suggest models of proper human behavior‚ nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral‚ do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted‚ or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste‚ then you have been made the victim of a very
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Defending your country is not an easy task. Having the determination to make it through the experiences of war is amazing at itself. While reading‚ The Things They Carried‚ by Tim O’Brien‚ it was acknowledged that men work through very tough situations for their country in Vietnam. The main characters in this novel show examples of the puritan work ethics due to the amount of strength they need to continue through tough times. The pride the men show off in the novel really shows
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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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Angel Caisapanta Professor Wells English 1102 14 February‚ 2011 “The Things They Carried” In the short story “The Things They Carried‚” written by Tim O’Brien‚ there is a lot of symbolism in each specific object that was mentioned. According to Dictionary.com‚ a symbolism is the practice of representing things by symbols‚ or of investing things with a symbolic meaning or character. A symbol is something used for or regarded as representing something else; a material object representing something
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The book that I have recently read was “The things they carried”. The book was written by Tim O’Brien who was once a US soldier. The book is about the Vietnam War which was started around 1955. Tim himself was a soldier fighting in the war who had survived. He writes the story fictionally but the names of the characters are of real people. The book is a series of short stories and the situation in the story reflects horror of the war. There are three areas of conflicts that occur in the stories
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"Boom-down‚ and you were dead‚ never partly dead.": An Examination of Responsibility in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried The Things They Carried‚ a collection of short stories written by Tim O’Brien and published in 1990‚ is a story which takes place during the Vietnam war. The Vietnam war was a battle originally between North and South Vietnam. The United States army was brought in on behalf of South Vietnam. The costs of the Vietnam war were extremely high with approximately three million
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