...The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, is about American soldiers in Vietnam war. In this novel, narrator tells his own story, and his own experience in war, how this war changes him and other soldiers and how unfair it is for a young ,educated person, to go to the war which has no purpose. In this novel, narrator manages to write down a story which makes him feel embarrassed, and story that he has never told to anyone. He mentions that, everyone believes that in moral emergency they will all behave like heroes of their youth, brave, without thought of any personal loss. In June of 1968, when narrator is twenty-one years old he is drafted to fight a war, and he has hard time making a decision. One thing that makes him go to the war...
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...“The Things They Carried” “The Things They Carried” tells about the side of war that you don’t read about in history books. The author, Tim O’Brien, does outline with great detail what the soldiers in this specific battalion carried, but in a way that you don’t normally read or see. O’Brien does list off the necessity items (can opener, pocket knife, mosquito repellant, etc.) but he also tells what each individual soldier carries because they are just that, individuals. No two have all the same items for the same reasons, each mans pack and artillery is tailored to suit his individual needs. The central character, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha. “Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament.” Out of fear, Ted Lavender carried thirty-four instead of the typical twenty-five grenade launcher rounds when he was shot down. Lavender also carried tranquilizers to help him cope. It’s this detail that helps this story stand out from the history books. We are told why each man carries certain things and this helps us to connect with the men on a personal level. We follow as Cross looks for comfort in the letters from Martha and eventually realizes that he is searching for something that probably isn’t there and destroys them along with the photographs of her. What I take away from this story is that war is very impersonal and at the same time very individualized. Each man contributes something...
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...If something exciting, horrific, or life changing happens in our lives, then what do we do? What we do is that we tell the people that did not see or has not experienced it, and just like that, the soldiers from the book, “The Things They Carried,” tells their own happenings and experiences. So many ways the storytellings are examined, but it all sums up and makes sense. There is a lot we can get from the way Tim O’Brien writes about storytelling and how he portrays it. In the end we can understand why the stories are so important. Just from the way storytelling is portrayed we can understand that it is something hard for anyone to retell the way it is supposed to be, for many different reasons. While reading the different stories being told...
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...The Things They Carried Gender Analysis Jimmy Cross the Lutenient of an active combat Army unit in Vietnam. Half the time his mind is cluttered with thoughts of Martha the young girl he dated before the war. All the letters that she wrote him cluster in Jimmy’s thoughts as he’s doing his duty in the Army. Jimmy and other members of his unit carry a number of different things as they navigate the thick underbrush of Vietnam. The unit also got in many conflicts with the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and also the Viet Cong. Jimmy Carries memories of Martha with him wherever he goes as a man in love with a woman should. I know first hand how this feels I proposed to my girlfriend on the 25th. Me and Jimmy have things in common I carry pictures...
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...Michelle Zhang Dr. Bloomquist 2/13/2015 Rhetorical Analysis A Whole New World: Construction and Destruction in The Things They Carried While the Vietnam War was a complex political pursuit that lasted only a few years, the impact of the war on millions of soldiers and civilians extended for many years beyond its termination. Soldiers killed or were killed; those who survived suffered from physical wounds or were plagued by PTSD from being wounded, watching their platoon mates die violently or dealing with the moral implications of their own violence on enemy fighters. Inspired by his experiences in the war, Tim O’Brien, a former soldier, wrote The Things They Carried, a collection of fictional and true war stories that embody the struggles that soldiers who fought in the war faced before, during, and after the war faced. These stories serve as an outlet for O’Brien, allowing both a cathartic release of his experiences and a documentation of the significant experiences that shaped him. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores the psychological destruction that fighting in the war encompassed while he was still a soldier as well as many years after being out of the war. In one of the stories, “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien encapsulates the psychological devastation he faced after he kills a Vietnamese soldier, his first time ever killing a man. However, in revealing his experience, he attempts to remove himself from the situation by using the third person to portray...
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...“They shared the weight of memory, They took up what others could no longer bear.” Tim O’Brien in his book, “The Things They Carried,” portrays the theme of the story through the painful memory of himself as well as his fellow comrades; before, in, and after the Vietnam war. “He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead.” Here, through this memory of Jimmy Cross that he took along with him to the war, the theme [Guilt and Shame] that basically gives the story more than half of its meaning as a whole was portrayed. He blamed himself for the death of Lavender; he thought that him just loving Martha causes his distraction which causes Lavender’s death, which to me , is a partial truth. Now, he would have to carry the guilt “like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war,” and probably for the test of his life. Another theme portrayed in this story is ‘Respect and Reputation.’ The soldiers at war are not there because they want to, but “rather, they were too frightened to be cowards”[pg 77]. Sometimes, the soldiers have to do things they will normally not do because they do not want to be seen as being weak by their friends and family and particularly by themselves. Such is the case of...
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...help them understand what life was like. Tim O’Brien is one of the most popular when it comes to this. In his novel, The Things They Carried, questioning morality, O’Brien gives first hand narrations of stories which show the impact of the Vietnam War on society. Tim O’Brien’s life is filled with many wonders and success. O’Brien...
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...struggle in talking about the war. Detachment or alienation is shown through stories as they help people cope with emotions without directly dealing with reality. In “The Things They Carried”, the author, Tim O’Brien, uses a familiar tone to explain the innermost emotions of soldiers who feel alienated and separated from society when they return home from the war. O’Brien addresses alienation when Norman Bowker returns home from war in the chapter “Speaking of Courage.” A feeling of separation from society is present in the quote “The town could not talk, and would not listen. “How’d you like to hear about the war?” he might have asked, but the place could only blink and shrug” (O’Brien 137). O’Brien’s familiar tone can be seen in this chapter through the...
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...The Things They Carried, is a novel written by Tim O'Brien that examines the lives of multiple foot soldiers before, after, and during the Vietnam War. Among that, it also delves deeper into the surreal and ambiguous nature of war, and the physical and mental trials that eventually leads to alienation and the questioning of the soldiers role in the war. This paragraph revolves around the crushed potential of a soldier, who had a promising life ahead of him but was drafted for war. O'Brien writes, " His life was now a constellation of possibilities. So yes, maybe a scholar.", throughout the book he uses the metaphor of his life being a constellation, filled with many opportunities and shining brightly, and the thought of being a scholar was not out of...
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...The Things They Carried In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” the story has a bittersweet tone throughout as the author takes us down a road of what being in the war is really like. The story jumps from each soldier’s point of view to invite us into their thoughts and emotions. The author uses long paragraphs to show that the soldiers’ days were long and drawn out. Repetition is used to show the importance of things and also to show what the soldier’s woke up and did every day. Random scenes of violence pop up to show the reader how unexpected things can happen at any given moment in the war. The theme of the story is of these soldiers being “men” and putting on a mask that shows no fear rather than being weak and showing they are scared....
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...In the story that “The Things They Carried” written by Tim O’Brien, you can see that the author really focused on the imagery in the story. The author projects his imagery school throughout the story by describing the men and the specific tools that each man has taking into battle to differentiate them as individuals and also describe the flashbacks that Lieutenant Jim Cross has. As the story begins the Author creates an imagery moment with the audience while describing what Lt. Jimmy Cross does after he finishes his daily march. After finishing his march every day Lt. Cross opens a canteen with letters from a girl named Martha that he dreams would one day become his lover. While Lt. Cross reads the letters the author describes some of the...
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...LC English 9 5/24/2017 From a young age we are taught that soldiers are our country’s heroes. They are the epitome of valor and bravery, representing the strength of our great nation on the front lines across the world. A true American soldier is one who can perform his duty in the face of catastrophe, and is willing to subvert all things feminine to do so. This interpretation of soldiers appears often in the media, while the extreme mental and emotional burden soldiers also often experience is often incredibly underrepresented. Being emotional is often associated as a feminine value, and for a soldier to demonstrate this would break the masculine image of himself, if they exposed their own weakness, they exposed it to each other, and such exposure was a reminder that none of them were as strong as they needed and were supposed to be. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien’s deconstruction of traditional masculinity reveals that the pressure of keeping the image of a true soldier can at times be more stressful than the war itself. ?The stereotypical image of...
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...Tim O’Brien uses rhetorical devices throughout The Things They Carried to bring together a correlation between fear of failure, shame of not owning up to their full potential and courageous actions. Tim O’Brien uses constant repetition, precise syntax and symbolism throughout the chapter “On the Rainy River” in The Things They Carried to show the interconnection between fear, shame, and courage. Fear of shame motivates the soldiers to show acts of courage. O’Brien rhetorically uses the repetition of questions and the to show the feeling of being ashamed to not fight in the war therefore, showing courageous actions. “ Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation or simple aggression? Who started it, and when, and why?”(38) Tim O’Brien...
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...The Things They Carried Summary: This section describes the soldier’s belongings they carried during the war, such as physical items like guns and mental belongings like their feelings and dignity, and how these belongings sometimes interfered with their reality. Message & Purpose: The message conveyed in this section is that soldiers carry physical belongings, as well as emotional, intangible items. These intangible items create the bridge to fantasy in an otherwise harsh war reality. He expresses that these items were sometimes heavier than the physical items they carried. Their personal items allow them to keep some part of home with them at all times. Tone/Diction: When describing the physical items of war they carried, O’Brien uses...
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...In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses indirect characterization to shine a light on the way soldiers view the idea of bravery in the Vietnam War. In the chapters “The Things They Carried,” and “Speaking of Courage,” the author describes how the soldiers had come to fear the idea of not being courageous, perhaps because, if one was not brave enough, they would perish in the strange and foreign land of Vietnam. However, a more plausible reason for them acting in this manner could be because they were expected, as both men and soldiers, to not show fear when times got hard, even if they’re terrified. The soldiers were expected to put on a strong front and be unshaken by the horrors of Vietnam. Moreover, the extent of this practice is shown in how they were expected to not...
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