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

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Literature Review - The Things They Carried The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a semi-autobiographical novel based on O’Brien’s experience in the Vietnam War. In the book, O’brien tells about the events leading up to him being drafted, war stories, and some narratives about his comrades. He says that he did not join the war because of morals, but because he was scared not to. Throughout the book, the characters have been coping with death/mortality, social obligations/pressures, guilt/shame, and moral conflicts. O’Brien shares his thoughts on what makes a “true war story” which is very interesting. Overall, O’Brien induces thought and feeling through the interesting medium of stories and language. The way O’Brien describes stories and …show more content…

Lemon died accidentally after stepping on a mine but the way O’Brien describes it is hauntingly beautiful. “Twenty years later, I can still see the sunlight on Lemon’s face. I can see him turning, looking back at Rat Kiley, then he laughed and took that that curious half step from shade into sunlight, his face suddenly brown and shining, and when his foot touched down, in that instant, he must’ve thought it was the sunlight that was killing him. It was not the sunlight. It was a rigged 105 round. But if I could ever get the story right, how the sun seemed to gather around him and pick him up and lift him high into a tree, if I could somehow recreate the fatal whiteness of that light, the quick glare, the obvious cause and effect, then you would believe the last thing Curt Lemon believed, which for him must’ve been the final truth.” (80). Not including the full quote would feel like an injustice. When reading this paragraph, it feels as though the reader is watching it happen with the others, in slow motion. This is a great example of how O’Brien uses the tool of language to his advantage. Another way he uses language is in symbolism. Rat Kiley, who was Lemon’s best friend, writes a letter to Lemon’s sister but receives no response. Struck with grief, Lemon offers a baby buffalo some of his rations of “pork and beans, but the baby buffalo wasn’t interested”(75). Then, “Rat shrugged. He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee. The animal did not make a sound.” (75) Once it was nearly dead, “Nothing moved except the eyes, which were enormous, the pupils shiny and black and dumb” (76). The baby buffalo is a bit like both Curt Lemon and his sister. Neither the buffalo nor the girl responded to Rat Kiley’s kind gestures and like Curt, it was a young, dumb, innocent, and not deserving of death. After all this, at the end of

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The thugs looked over to find where the howling was coming from and Lemon Brown lunged himself at them, causing himself to roll down the stairs. The thugs went outside of the house and after awhile they left. After seeing how much Lemon Brown adored his treasures, Greg realized that his dad caring so much for him meant everything. Greg now appreciates the lectures about decisions he was trying to make. Greg’s treasure was his relationship with his father all because of Lemon Brown’s story.

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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

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In the book,” The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, an American novelist who is best known for his works of fiction which depict his experiences in the Vietnam War, he suggests to the audience how the Vietnam War was like to him and to the company he was in during the war. Through the use of his characters to show what they carried with them throughout the war and in the peace after the war, he uses sensory details to illustrate how it felt to be in Vietnam, he uses symbolism to depict certain points of the war, his use of irony to depict something which suggests but means something opposite, and his use of themes through the story. Tim O’Brien focuses on the characters, sensory details, symbolism, irony, and themes throughout the story

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High in the mountains O’Brien and his men come across a baby water buffalo. Rat Kiley offers some of his C rations to the buffalo, but the buffalo doesn’t eat them. Rat Kiley Shrugged and shoots the buffalo multiple times. Despite the multiple gunshot wounds the water buffalo barely stays alive. The men then dump the buffalo in the local well.

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A handsome kid, really sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted” The way that he is talking about how Curt lemon is and describing all of his features in this one split second. How he is talking about how beautiful he is when he is dying and the ways that the light hits him how it is all so

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Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon were playing catch together when Curt stepped on the booby trap. Rat Kiley took the responsibility of why Curt Lemon died. Rat Kiley after setting up to stay the night in an abandoned village Kiley came across a baby water buffalo. Rat Kiley attempted to give food to the water buffalo but the water buffalo did not want any. The action of the water buffalo triggered Rat Kiley to shoot it; “ It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt…

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Like, “I traveled around, and one time I come home, and there was the letter saying Jesse got killed in the war. Broke my heart it truly did. They sent back what he had with him over there, and what it was is this old mouth fiddle and these here clippings.” (12) Lemon told Greg. Based on this evidence it demonstrates that Lemon had something meaningful, his son, but when his son died the things he had become Lemon’s treasures.

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The death of the baby water buffalo was very real, very violent. It’s likely that O’Brien wrote it this way to convey his emotions about it. The buffalo didn’t mean anything to him, so he saw its death for exactly what it was, exactly how it happened. However, Curt Lemon was someone who was alongside O’Brien in his platoon and suddenly dead, so it’s clear that O’Brien’s emotions affected the way that he viewed Lemon’s

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In the novel “The Things They Carried” author and also ex-veteran Tim O’brien writes a collection of linked short stories about a platoon of American soldiers fighting during the vietnam war. The Vietnam war was a long, unpopular and costly war and once U.S citizens began to see the harsh realities of the war their support for it quickly diminished. Approximately 20 years after the war had started, due to the fear of communism spreading, it finally came to an end leaving at least 58,000 American soldiers, out of 3 million casualties, dead and the remaining scarred for life with emotional and physical burdens. Throughout each short story we learn the significance in which the the title of the novel holds, it expresses that the soldiers not

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While hiding from his problems he finds himself in the abandoned building with Lemon Brown. As they talk, a group of bad men arrive to steal Lemon's treasure, when Greg sees that they are about to catch Lemon Brown, " Greg felt himself near panic. The steps came closer, and still Lemon Brown didn’t move. He was an eerie sight, a bundle of rags standing at the top of the stairs, his shadow on the wall looming over him. Maybe, the thought came to Greg, the scene could be even eerier.

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For instance, “You really think that treasure of yours is worth fighting for?” Greg asked. “Against a pipe?” This demonstrates that he loved that treasure so much he would die for it. Lemon willing to die for the treasure which tells us a lot about Lemons character.

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It’s true that the sunlight killed him, from his point if view. But not from O’Brien’s. He saw how he exploded on a detonator . and that’s the truth. That’s where the reader gets to the diverse truth.

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War was so much more than just war to O’Brien and he able to share this through his writing. " But this is true: stories can save us. ... in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world." (page

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Telling a true war story can be hard to do, because soldiers are tempted to change some traumatic aspects to make the story easier to comprehend, and not so traumatic for the listener. For the readers who prefer the brutal and gruesome stories,

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Mr. Brown’s action of throwing himself at the thugs indicates that Lemon is devoted to his family, since his treasure actually turned out to be newspaper clippings and a harmonica, symbolic of his late son and life with his spouse. The devotion is recognized through Lemon Brown’s actions because his behavior is something a reader can relate to, since the feeling of family devotion is an ideal in society. Through the story of Lemon Brown’s treasure, it is clear that action is one device that a writer can use to convey human nature to their readers because the reader can relate to the characters through their actions. Furthermore, actions reveal yet another character’s personality in the story “The Possibility of Evil”, where an old lady named Miss Strangeworth lives in a small town that loves her but begins to send rude anonymous letters to all the residents, because she thinks the is getting rid all evil in the town. When Miss Strangeworth writes her letters, the first one she writes is to a new mother who is worried about her unenergetic baby, and she writes “DIDN’T YOU EVER SEE AN IDIOT CHILD BEFORE?

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