Pride Many of the characters in The Things They Carried exemplify tremendous pride in their actions‚ causing them to do good or bad things that they would not have the courage to do otherwise. O’Brien’s personal experience shows that the fear of being shamed before one’s fellow soldiers is a powerful motivating factor in war. He does not want to fight in a war he believes is unjust‚ but he does not want to be thought of as a coward. This same attitude among numerous characters sets a consistent
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Journal Entry 2 The short story‚ “The Things They Carried”‚ by Tim O’brien‚ was my favorite reading of this week. The author states what the company is carrying‚ as well as emotional burdens that they carry. I think that theme of this story can be summarized as “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. As I stated in the discussion‚ I think this story makes a profound point about trauma and emotional stress. Physical burdens are easily observable. For example‚ when people see someone in a wheelchair their
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characters and scenes that are unique. This is the case with Tim O’Brien’s‚ "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong." This is a story where love and war collide after a soldier brings his sweetheart to his Vietnamese post. On the whole‚ this chapter in The Things They Carried is far superior to the film‚ The Soldier’s Sweetheart‚ because it has thorough descriptions of characters’ feelings‚ including symbolism concerning objects and important events. When the audience is able to draw it’s own story around an author’s
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some point in their lives will experience a death of a loved one and will try to cope with it as best as they can. In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien‚ O’Brien talks about his war stories and how he and the soldiers handled the deaths of the soldiers while at war. The soldiers had to deal with the stress‚ sadness‚ and guilt when seeing their partner get killed. O’Brien talks about the different coping mechanisms the soldiers use when facing the death of a fellow comadre. The soldiers tell jokes
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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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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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Psychoanalytic Criticism of The Things They Carried Within the book The Things They Carried‚ Tim O’Brien said‚ “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.” O’Brien is a Vietnam veteran who does not consider himself a hero. This is interesting because while growing up in the United States of America‚ people have learned
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Assignment 1 In Tim O’Briens The Things They Carried‚ the character of Mary Anne‚ in the chapter Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong serves as a metaphor for the loss of innocence that the soldiers lose during their time in the war. “The guys sometimes liked to kid her...- but Mary Anne would just smile and stick out her tongue”(96). As a child‚ you would stick out your tongue to make fun of someone or use it as gesture towards someone who was making fun of you. In the beginning‚ when Mary Anne
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The Things They Carried‚ written by Tim O’brien is a novel‚ which depicts the Vietnamese war‚ specifically experiences of the soldiers during and after the war. Youth is portrayed in the novel as a significant factor‚ which influences not only the idea represented in the novel but also the author himself. Although this is no explicitly stated throughout the book‚ there are a couple of characters that are more significant to Tim O’brien than others. These characters are Linda and Kathleen. By analyzing
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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 for Martha
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