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A Common Soldier In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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People often reminisce about the decisive victories and suffering defeats of war, but the overwhelming horrors and tragedies of the actual soldiers are often overlooked. Because of this harsh truth, Tim O’Brien sheds light on the physical and psychological burdens on the life of a common soldier through his autobiography, The Things They Carried. Despite all the atrocities found in the Vietnam War, O’Brien still manages to appreciate life and all the people around him. Through all of this, everyone who reads this book can learn something new about the world around them in addition to something about themselves. Ultimately, The Things They Carried should stay in the curriculum because it truly shows the terrors and hardships of war, exemplifies …show more content…

Tim O’Brien experienced this first hand when Leslie, a childhood friend died at the age of nine.At that time, O’Brien could not keep her off his mind. He realized that he loved her after she had died even though the both of them were still children. However, the effects of her death can be seen several decades later.When the war was over, O’Brien still looks back to his time with Linda “And as a writer now, I want to save Linda’s life. Not her body-her life. She died, of course” (O’Brien 222). As a fourth grader, he knew that Linda was going to die, but could not bring himself to accept it. He wanted to spend more time with the person he loved. But by the time he realized, it was already too late. He recognized this again in the war “When Ted Lavender was shot in the head, the men talked about how they’d never seen him so mellow, how it wasn’t the bullet but the tranquilizers that blew his mind” (O’Brien 226). By experiencing the loss of the loved one, O’Brien is able to convey a message of appreciating other people’s lives. He wrote this book to convince people to become more aware of the ones in their life that make living worthwhile, and learn to cherish the moments with

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Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brian, the author discusses distinct items the soldiers carry with them during the Vietnam war. He explores weapons and equipment, but also talks about emotions and feelings the men frequently are approached by. The title of the novel is used to highlight the heavy emotional burden the soldiers had to carry during and after the war. In many cases, a soldier felt responsible for the death of one of his closest comrades.

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How Does Tim O Brien Tell The Story In The Lives Of The Dead

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In Tim O’Brien’s “The Lives of the Dead”, no one can die; everyone can live on in stories. This short story is about how to keep people alive through stories. In the war Tim has to cope with an abundance of death; this reminds him of Linda, his first love’s death. The guys in war with Tim would pretend the people never died telling jokes about the people who have died both the dead north Vietnamese and their fallen comrades.

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Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Tim O’Brien writes us a wonderful fictional tale of a platoon of men in vietnam during the vietnam war, The Things They Carried shows the reader that when the men are over in this distant and strange land, not only do they carry physical objects, but emotional baggage and ideas that truly make, or break a man in war. Tim and his men show several signs of stress and turmoil while fighting the war, and while they survive they begin to understand what is really means to live, die, and what is right, and wrong. While over in vietnam the men are in a war, not a simple skirmish or fight, but a full on war against an enemy that they were not sure they are the enemy. The men would walk from location from location seeing what there is to do and trying

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Tim O 'brien 's first love was named Linda. They were only 9 years old but he believed it was love. Months after their first date he found out she had a brain tumor and weeks after that she died. Tim writes stories about her to try to bring her back. However, she is also the reason he is so terrified of death.

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Tim O’Brien, a Vietnam war veteran, is a famous author. One of his most famous books is “The things they carried.” Tim O’Brien has been able to achieve success in his writings due to his writings being based on actual events that happened while he served. Another reason his writings are so successful is how he immerses the reader into his stories using common military jargon, how he describes events and people within his stories. Due to him being in the military for a few years, Tim O’Brien has received a lot of influence for his writing, he has elements that make his writing unique, and how Tim O'Brien's stories have an overarching theme of death.

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Tim O Brien Figurative Language

1094 Words | 5 Pages

Novelist, Tim O’Brien writes short semi true stories about his and other’s experiences in the Vietnam war. O’Brien wanted to explain to his audience what happens in war and how it effects people after the fact. O’Brien really helps his audience acknowledge how much war really does change people. Tim’s dynamic use of symbolism, imagery, and figurative language emphasizes the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that people experience during and after the war. O’Brien begins by analyzing the thoughts of sorrow and loss overwhelm the Vietnam veterans upon their return back home.

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Deaths Of War In All The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Deaths of War No one ever thinks about what a soldier goes through when they lose someone from their platoon during a war. The emotional and physical burden a death brings, as shown in All the Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, can bring out the guilt and fear in a young man, who was thrown into a war. The first death witnessed in Tim O’Briens platoon was Ted Lavender.

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Linda's Role In The Things They Carried

1094 Words | 5 Pages

You can see that that by him dealing with the loss of Linda, the same coping method helped him get over Linda’s death, also helped him while he was at war in Vietnam. For example when Norman and Kiowa died unexpectedly he quickly knew how to deal with it. As soon as they die Obrien tries to keeps their names alive by talking about them through some war stories. Linda was his prime motivator to help him believe that storytelling help aids the healing process of pain, confusion and the depression of death especially and unexpected ones.

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Death In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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Death is an inevitable part of the life cycle. To bring those who are gone back to life, people must recreate their memories with the deceased through storytelling. In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien shows that when someone experiences a loss, by telling stories of the lost one it will keep them alive through the mind and help one cope with them being gone. In the first chapter, The Things They Carried, O’Brien demonstrates the theme of telling stories to cope with death by how the platoon members talk about Ted Lavender’s death, “Like cement, Kiowa whispered in the dark.

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A Brief Review Of Tim O 'Brien's The Lives Of The Dead'

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By referring to himself when he says that “Tim [was] trying to save Timmy’s life with a story”, he is essentially trying to breathe life into Linda through stories, allowing his younger self to cope with the loss of his young lover. This is essential to his own wellbeing because he must create an alternate reality for him so he can slowly understand his own feelings of loss and death. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the stories of Linda and the desensitizing war emphasizes the importance of stories as a coping mechanism because the juxtaposition shows the contrast between the realities of the situation and made up illusions that give comfort to O’Brien. The last line likewise demonstrates the intimate relationship between death and life because even when he “take[s] a high leap into the dark”, he eventually “come[s] down thirty years later,” showing there is little space from death’s hand, no matter how far one attempts to jump away. Even though O’Brien is only creating illusions for himself, he is keeping himself and Linda alive through his own confession that even though he is forty-three years old, he is still making up stories that Linda is

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How Is The Figurative Language Used In The Things They Carried

1222 Words | 5 Pages

In “Lives of the Dead'', O’Brien tells the story of Linda to compare the death of a young girl to the death of young soldiers. The narrator starts the chapter off by stating that “stories can save us” (213), which relates to how stories help soldiers cope. The narrator is telling readers how important storytelling actually is. This idea is continued later on in the chapter, when the narrator was reflecting on his childhood crush and how he “wanted to let her know how [he] felt” (217). This connects to previous chapters and how soldiers tell stories to communicate their real feelings to people.

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Things They Carried

1373 Words | 6 Pages

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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The Things They Carried Death Analysis

665 Words | 3 Pages

Death: the inevitable, but vital part in the circle of life. It 's something nobody ever wants to face or speak of; the question remains, how does one deal with death? In “The Things They Carried” there are several examples where the main character, Tim O 'Brien encounters the hardships of death. O 'Brien shares that his first experience with death occurred when a former classmate named Linda, died due to a brain tumor. O 'Brien tells his audience how he learned to adapt and cope with losing Linda by dreaming of a universe where they could somehow still be together, even if it’s only a figment of his imagination.

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Lives Of The Dead Literary Analysis

706 Words | 3 Pages

Obrien keeps the deceased characters Linda, Kiowa, Ted Lavender, Curt and Timmy alive, through his memories, dreams and stories. In Tim O’Brien’s “Lives of the Dead,” the loss of innocence and the power of literacy are both prevalent themes. Symbols are often used in a story to mean more than its literary meaning; Linda’s red cap, in “Lives of the Dead,” is a symbol of innocence’s. Linda’s innocence affected neither her illness nor death. Linda was O’Brien’s childhood girlfriend; when she first found out she was sick and had cancer, she began to wear a red cap, every day.

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Title Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

1039 Words | 5 Pages

He mainly wrote about the man he killed. O’Brien talked in much detail of what the man looked like, what he thought he was like, and how he wished he could take it back. He was distraught and seemed very distant, and his friends could not seem to keep him from staring at the body and thinking about it. Tim focused on a butterfly that was flying around the body as a way to try to cope with the gruesome death, he kept doing that throughout the book during deaths. O’Brien was definitely affected by killing this man, and it added to the baggage he already was carrying.

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