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A Brief Review Of The Things They Carried 'By Tim O' Brien

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Tim O’ Brien’s book ‘The Things They Carried’ is a series of stories about the Vietnam War. Although all chapters in this book are related to the Vietnam War, each story transmits a different message to the readers and is narrated in different ways. In this essay, I have analyzed two stories to find the themes of each one and through what they are expressed. In “How to tell a true war story”, the author narrates two stories of the men in the Alpha Company and throughout the stories he disputes whether they are real or fabricated. On the other hand, in “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, Rat Kiley tells the story of his first assignment in the isolated mountains of Chu Lai. In this story, the author exposes the idea of how war can significantly …show more content…

In “How to Tell a True War Story”, the main theme is how to tell whether a war story is true or made-up. The author explores the conflict within reality and fiction by arguing that true war stories are hard to believe. In O’Brien’s view, he points out that “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”(p.80). Moreover, to make his point, the author spins between facts and fiction causing difficulty for the readers to believe if those stories actually happened or …show more content…

His stories are images of his own experiences in the war, as he is the narrator and main character in most of the stories. Some of his points of view are how war is an ambiguous thing and how it changes people. For instance, in “How to tell a true war story” the author reflects on the feelings of being alive after a fight, proposing that war is hell but also many other things. In O’Brien’s words “You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self- your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it. In the midst of evil, you want to be a good man. You want decency. You want justice and courtesy and human concord, things you never knew you wanted.” (p.77) The author also suggests that the characters in this story had to choose a way of living or a cultural identity instead of taking elements from the Vietnamese culture and blending them in a comfortable way to live in. Most notably, the two chapters differ in the themes explored and in the position that the author assumes. However, they both illustrate how war can quite change

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O’Brien then goes on to say that failure to remember and forgery of details take place in every war story, causing the truth to be questioned. O’Brien finishes

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Journal Assignment: THE THINGS THEY CARRIED by Tim O’Brien “On the Rainy River” Agree or disagree – A person can enter a war as an act of cowardice. Prove your answer. The statement is completely agreeable with because Tim O’Brien is proof of someone entering the war out of cowardice. Many people argue that entering a war, willingly or unwillingly, is in itself an act of honor and bravery, and although this may be true in some circumstances others, such as O’Brien’s beg the question.

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In the short story, “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien focuses on this to show that everyone fighting in a war has a story. He spends the story describing the man he killed and searching for justification of his actions. He carries around guilt with him because of it, and his fellow soldiers try to help him justify and come to terms with his action by saying things like, “You want to trade places with him? Turn it all upside down= you want that? I mean, be honest,” (126) and “Tim, it’s a war.

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The most prominent way O’Brien displays fictional truth is through having fictional characters in each story but the theme and emotions behind the story are real emotions felt in war. O’Brien shows that his stories have fictional characters by having the narrator say, “I did not kill him. But I was present, you see, and my presence was guilt

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The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, illustrates the experiences of a man and his comrades throughout the war in Vietnam. Tim O’Brien actually served in the war, so he had a phenomenal background when it came to telling the true story about the war. In his novel, Tim O’Brien uses imagery to portray every necessary detail about the war and provide the reader with a true depiction of the war in Vietnam. O’Brien starts out the book by describing everything he and his comrades carry around with them during the war. Immediately once the book starts, so does his use of imagery.

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O’Brien not only is the writer but also puts himself in the story by being an actual character. O’Brien says that his novel is a combination of short stories, essays, and journalisms. Several times throughout the story, O’Brien mentions how he feels like he is completely reliving the past and sometimes its sad, sometimes its happy. One of the most important stories throughout the book is "How To Tell A True War Story," and the title does not refer to how to simply tell a true war story but how to tell if a war story is true or not. An important theme in the novel that centers on the difference between how war is perceived by people who have not experienced it first hand as opposed to what war really is

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O’Brien goes into great depth in this small quote on how loss of innocence and war can affect people in the war. The quote “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t” shows how war is so different from what any human experiences at home. After that small quote he follows it up by bringing up how you have to use normal stuff to show how crazy these things are and how much of a pole it can have on somebody during a war. The way that war is treated for many is mostly the mental part that is struggling. But for many "War is hell, but that's not 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.

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On the topic of morality: to be moral is to know the distinction between right and wrong, or to have that distinction in general. The truth in war, O’Brien argues, is never moral. If the truth is moral, then it is a lie (65). Even if the truth is the story-truth (171), it can be more real more true, and more astonishing than the whole of the real truth.

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But sometime when you gain perspective too quickly you can find yourself in a “fog ....” and feel nothing but “overwhelming ambiguity” (78). This is where most people feel falsely think they 've lost perspective because in these moments everything you know is challenged and your perspective must adapt for the new experiences you 've just encountered. When this happens it’s easier in the moment to believe you 're just confused and jumbled by your physical and mental chaos but infact what’s really happening is you are gaining knowledge and connecting parts of the world and ideas that really make no sense but with time will. THe stress of war makes it seem as though everything is changing like “love into hate,” and “ ugliness into beauty” (78). But what is important to note is that your connections and what you know to be “truth” is just disord but your perspective is not lost it 's just adding another dimension that your mind needs time to

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War Books For some people war is a piece of history and for other ’s it’s a piece of their lives they’ll never forget. Brian Turner and Tim O’Brien share the same topic, which was war. Both men did fight in different war, which were in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and used literature to write their experiences.

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“How to Tell a True War Story” and “Ambush” are stories that both explore on topics: truth, the real definition of a true war story, and the role of truth. O 'Brien starts off “How to Tell a True War Story” with “This is true.” Starting this story with such a bold sentence not only makes it seem more true, but to some extent, it acts as a comfort statement to the narrator’s own doubts, as if there were unspeakable uncertainties and lies of the narrator. The title of this story also comes into play, with a meta-fictional name “How to Tell a True War Story”, as if it were a guide, a manual, having a true war story tell the readers how to tell a true war story. However ironically, towards the middle of the story, us as

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Hidden somewhere within the blurred lines of fiction and reality, lies a great war story trapped in the mind of a veteran. On a day to day basis, most are not willing to murder someone, but in the Vietnam War, America’s youth population was forced to after being pulled in by the draft. Author Tim O’Brien expertly blends the lines between fiction, reality, and their effects on psychological viewpoints in the series of short stories embedded within his novel, The Things They Carried. He forces the reader to rethink the purpose of storytelling and breaks down not only what it means to be human, but how mortality and experience influence the way we see our world. In general, he attempts to question why we choose to tell the stories in the way

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In the book “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien writes about his experience before and during the Vietnamese War, tells stories about his troop, and their lives before and after the war. He illustrates about how his life changed because of the war, and emphasizes on how the war is so cruel and has no moral at all. His stories involve a lot about Vietnamese War. If people read his story superficially, they will say it is definitely a war story, but he argues that his book is actually about love (81). Although his story looks like a war story, it is actually a loved story because his stories are either about his loved ones or dedicated to his loved ones.

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According to O’Brien, you only “tell a true war story” “if you just keep on telling it”.(The Things They Carried 91). For O’Brien it is not the facts that makes a story worth remembering, but that a story becomes part of the present so “there is nothing to remember except the story”( The Things They Carried

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“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.

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