The Things They Carried. Page 174-175‚ Written Commentary Many people ask themselves who is to blame for deaths in war‚ and if it is subjective to a person‚ or if it is contextual. In the following extract from Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”‚ it is impossible to think just about the Vietnam War as situational cause of the death of so many‚ the reader has to view the war person by person‚ each person or situation differing from each other. Right after the death of Kiowa‚ the men go searching
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The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien uses narratives to evoke various thoughts within the reader. Yet Mary Anne Bell’s story is a cautionary tale of the influence the battlefield has on a person. One of the medics‚ Mark Fossie‚ decides to bring his high school sweetheart right into the war‚ not comprehending the cost of his action. The war turns innocent‚ naïve soldiers into brutal‚ desensitized killers; Mary Anne being no exception. Her tale illustrates how the war physically and mentally alters
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The book The Things They Carried‚ written by Tim O’Brien is about the account of himself and his fellow soldiers who served with him at the Vietnam war. The book starts with O’Brien describing everyone around him and just like the title reads listing out everything they carried‚ standard military issued equipment and few small personal belongings they got from the people close to them. Later in the story he talks about the life they have after the war and how the war affected everyone differently
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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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Christana Adeyemi Professor C. Goodison English 1121 March 3‚ 2014 Wartime Effects In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien‚ the main character‚ Jimmy Cross drafted into the United States Army where he served as an infantryman in Vietnam. In the beginning of the story O’Brien‚ introduce Jimmy Cross as the Lieutenant who is in love with his college crush‚ Martha. These points lead to the transformation of Lieutenant Cross actions‚ in which he matures from a man deeply in love to a leader ready
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American author Tim O’Brien accolade short story “The Things They Carried” voices the American soldiers throughout the Vietnam War. The story shadows Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and division of soldiers as they contract with death of fellow soldiers‚ depression and battling with the war within themselves. Moreover‚ O’Brien channels his own experiences as a soldier in the 23rd Infantry Division‚ 3rd Platoon. In this gasping tale‚ readers will enter the mind of Jimmy Cross and the events which
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A true writers writer‚ Tim O’Brien discusses the connection between truth and storytelling in his novel “The Things They Carried”. He uses stories to dabble on the fine line of what actually happened and what seemed to happen. O’Brien uses his stories not to relay details of a certain event‚ but rather to express the teeming emotions felt and attempt to keep lost ones alive. A universal aspect of O’Brien’s stories is death. He speaks of his dead comrades to keep them alive‚ similar to how the
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In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’brien he conveys that not only did the soldiers fighting in Vietnam carry the material things they needed to survive‚ they also carried around the psychological baggage of the war and the things they were faced with daily. O’brien shows readers through his writing that Vietnam had a way of altering you. You were no longer the person
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in order to make a large society work. I think that it can be broken down like a Car. a car has many parts‚ that all work together in order to make the car go‚ for example a car has the engine part‚ but a car won’t move without all the other parts that officially makes it a ‘car.’ Just like a society‚ if we were to just have the giant corporations‚ and the general public was gone‚ then we would have no one to buy the goods and society would break down because a major part of it is missing‚ Now if one
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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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