ipl-logo

Ambiguity In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

518 Words3 Pages

. The Things They Carried is about Tim O’Brien, the author, and all of his stories while in the Vietnam War. Most of his stories do not have any truth to them but show the paradox war has to offer. These stories bring love, guilt, beauty, gruesomeness, and ambiguity which all tie together what the Vietnam War was and how it affected O’Brien and his fellow soldiers. Although most of the stories O’Brien tell are not true, they still contain love, guilt, and the ambiguity a true war story needs in order to have an effect on the people he’s telling them to. Throughout the book, O’Brien tells many different stories about himself and his buddies during the war. He says true war stories have a certain fell to them. According to O’Brien, true war stories don’t generalize and will …show more content…

They never have just one meaning or a meaning at all. The stories also don’t tell just one story about war. They have elements of beauty and gruesomeness; love and guilt; lucidity and ambiguity. After O’Brien tells a story about soldiers on a mountain, he says “In a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning” (74). Sometimes true war stories are hard to tell because of this factor. The stories serve the purpose of helping people understand what war is really like. Not everyone will be able to understand the story if it doesn’t have a clear moral. It’s hard to extract something to learn from these war stories so people feel they are not worth telling or listening to. He also says, “The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But

Show More
Related

Why Does Tim O Brien Only Share Vietnam War

516 Words | 3 Pages

This phase out of the book The Things They Carried, shows how important a detailed description is. Having read the fictional story about Tim O’Brien’s experience in the Vietnam War, can really set off that emotional connection because it makes you feel like you are really

Read More

Reasons Behind Tim O Brien's War Stories

219 Words | 1 Pages

There are three main reasons why Tim O'Brien writes war stories. The first reason is to help us heal. The second reason is to encourage us. The last reason is to help us see others point of view.

Read More

How Does Tim O Brien Tell A True War Story?

901 Words | 4 Pages

For example in the chapter, O’Brien announces that “A true war story is never moral”(O’Brien 65), but, later on in the chapter he contradicts himself conveying that “ In a true war story, if there's a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth ”(O’Brien 74). He starts off saying a true war story has no morals, but then he explains that the moral means everything to a war story, which contradicts his earlier statement. This contradictory excerpt from the chapter parallels the idea of the Vietnam war in the fact that to make peace, there had to be war and bloodshed to solve the problem that the United States and North Vietnam had with one another. War is contradictory in itself ,and O’Brien’s contradictory motif illustrates it well. In fact, the idea of war is a reoccurring topic in “How to Tell a True War Story,” and O’Brien illustrates this idea of war with many other devices as

Read More

Analyzing O Brien's The Things They Carried

575 Words | 3 Pages

“But the strain I am under, the uncertainty, the hunger, the danger, these hours with the dead man have made me desperate…” Truth is the information and ideas that matter. Although war cannot be generalized, truth is a generalization of the feelings, lessons, and effects of an event. If someone was not present for an event, and they’re not going to ever witness it through a video, then the details of a story don’t matter. Only the lasting feelings and thoughts matter. In O’Brien’s piece, he talks about a man named Mitchell Sanders telling a story of 6 soldiers in the mountain.

Read More

Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: An Analysis

1399 Words | 6 Pages

Tim O’Brien’s definition of a true war story is not at all about war but the embarrassment, love, memory and sorrow. In the novel, The Things They Carried, a series of war stories about the Vietnam War, the author Tim O’Brien supplies a definition of a true war story. He states, “This is one story I’ve never told before. Not to anyone. Not my parents, not my brother or sister, not even to my wife.

Read More

Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: A Literary Analysis

1292 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More

How Does Tim O Brien Use Story Telling In The Things They Carried

1094 Words | 5 Pages

He purposely started off the book this way so that there would be a distinct connection between the people and the stories. This connection is not as vague as a run of the mill war novel that connects the people, places, and battles they fought. Instead this seems more like a peek into the minds of these soldiers, we get a sense of how they felt and what they were going through. In one chapter, O’Brien talks about stories. He states, "Stories are for joining the past to the future.

Read More

Important Quotes From The Things They Carried

1470 Words | 6 Pages

In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien we learn about O’Brien and his soldiers during the Vietnamese war. The Vietnamese war was a deadly and very costly war between the North Vietnam and their communist allies versus the Southern Vietnam and the United states. Throughout the novel Tim O’Brien narrates many stories about the war. Stories about traumatic incidents, pleasant occasions, sorrowful events, and even peculiar event. Personal accounts about himself and also tells about experiences his fellow soldiers faced.

Read More

Imagery In The Things They Carried

543 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More

Things They Carried Innocence Quotes

886 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More

The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

934 Words | 4 Pages

O’brien explains that the behavior of these soldiers show just how brutal war can be. True war stories do not “instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor

Read More

How To Tell A True War Story Analysis

1284 Words | 6 Pages

“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

Read More

Fiction And Reality In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

1413 Words | 6 Pages

In The Things They Carried, O’Brien’s story-telling method is an attempt to show that the lines between fiction and reality are often not that far. Even though the names or details may not be fully accurate, this does not change the fact that they are a reality for many. Additionally, he challenges the importance that we place on war and links it to a storytelling aspect because he’s pointing out that not every story has a moral to it. With tragic events, we typically want some sort of meaning behind them, some sort of assurance that the incident was not for nothing. However, this is not always true, as a character “Yeah, well…I don’t see no moral”…

Read More

Unity And Community In The Grapes Of Wrath By John Steinback

1649 Words | 7 Pages

The Grapes of Wrath The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinback is the story which take place in a time where opportunity is nil and desperation has overtaken American en masse. In the world of the Grapes of Wrath, the story is littered with instances of abuse, hunger, and placing profits and ownership of above fellow man. In the vacuum of opportunity and empathy on the part of captains of industry, common man becomes united in their misery and endeavors in struggling to survive. The Grapes of Wrath is a narrative from the perspective of those who had been deprived of their basic needs for the sake of profits and avarice. Much of the story details instances of callousness, greed, and is essentially a criticism of America’s Industrial revolution

Read More

The Things They Carried: An Analysis

688 Words | 3 Pages

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

Read More

More about Ambiguity In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

Related Topics

Open Document