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Ambiguity In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, ambiguity is used to enforce the character of the story.O’Brien communicates the struggle of being on the battlefield, however it wasn’t a choice but a matter of abstract selection in which he couldn’t deny.O’Brien uses series of fear, the savage of the war on the soldiers and how the over certain fear.Repetition of the emphasize the ambiguity of dead. O’Brien fears going to war, he was about to risk his life. O’Brien confuses the text ,when he talks about “the man I killed” with an image of himself being the killer, but later in the chapter a mention telling the man to “run” but the grenade blows up before he could say run.The man dead did not affect him at the moment it
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In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien exemplifies a central question in the book. The central question is, “Is war more good or bad?” To an extent, O’Brien answered that question. The answer is almost clear. O’Brien’s book on some his experiences in the Vietnam War captures nearly every detail need to answer the central question.

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The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a novel that emphasizes symbolism in chapter 7, “How to Tell a War Story” the character/narrator Tim O’Brien expresses The struggle that affects a soldier in the war. “He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn't to kill; it was to hurt it” (O'Brien, 75) In Chapter 7 How to Tell a war story, the story expresses the grief that Rat Kiley goes through.

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Firstly, he has found that storytelling has the power to alter painful memories. O’Brien finds himself witnessing a lot of death in his lifetime and a

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Hunter Berman Ms.Silver AP English P-4 6/7/2018 The things They Carried Historical Report The Things They Carried is a novel written by Tim O'Brien about U.S. soldiers stationed in Vietnam and their personal stories of what they literally and emotionally carry. He focus on what the soldiers have on their person and how each of those items have an effect on them for reason specific to them.

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They didn’t disturb the body, they just grabbed the old man’s hand and offered a few words and moved away” (O’Brien 214). In the end, O’Brien admitted to being afraid to do the same as the other men. It “like a funeral without the sadness,” holds a disrespect for the dead (O’Brien 215). Later in the chapter, O’Brien admits that during the war, he had many encounters with death, both by allies and enemies. He had to “climbed a tree and threw down what was left of Curt Lemon… watched Kiowa sink into the muck… policed up the enemy KIAs” (O’Brien 229).

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The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brian raises questions about how fiction can be more truthful than facts. The book contains many short stories about Vietnam told by different perspectives. The author creates characters that seem very real based on personal experiences. These characters tell graphic stories about the war making the book seem real. O’Brian creates a rich story by exaggerating details in order to get the reader to try and be able to feel how he experienced the war.

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474 Words | 2 Pages

Heroes are meant to be strong, powerful, and unbreakable. O’Brien shows us the opposite of that when he begins to breakdown after killing the boy with the grenade. He not only regrets it, but begins to imagine a life he had before his death. He couldn’t stop looking at his deformed face and even thought of him later in life when he figured the boy coming towards him as he once did before his death. Heroes aren’t supposed to regret what they’ve done or even be traumatized, they’re supposed to rise above that and show their spirit.

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788 Words | 4 Pages

In the story, The Things They Carried, in the chapter, Spin, Tim O’Brien wrote the quote “Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity when memory is erased when there is nothing to remember except the story.” In this quote, O’Brien uses a rhetorical device called, Anaphora. Interpreting the meaning is not always exactly what the original meaning is.

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Darkness of Light, Memory of Loss The mirror that reflects you is the truth and the darkness that shines through is your reflection that finds light within war and that light within war is the truest love story ever told. In the nonlinear novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien focuses on what a true war story is and how to differentiate between a lie and a truth, which to believe and the difference between story-truth and happening-truth. Tim O’Brien uses his skill in storytelling to convey his memories to people who have not fully experienced the Vietnam War first hand.

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648 Words | 3 Pages

The Things They Carried “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a short story set during the Vietnam War. In the story, O’Brien lists many different items soldiers in the Alpha Company carried with them as they humped across the rugged terrain. Many carried necessities such as rations, matches, ammunition and things of that nature; however, many soldiers also carried quite peculiar objects such as condoms, pantyhose, and M&Ms. Readers can grasp a closer insight of the characters’ lives after further examination of the symbolism and meaning of the things they carried.

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Symbolism in O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, plays a huge part in trying to support the author’s message. O’Brien uses symbols everywhere such as with the characters and to help develop the structure of the novel. The author decides to hide some of the symbols while some of the other symbols are in the open, making the symbols easy for the readers to pick up or understand clearly. The author uses symbolism in different forms, mainly intangible for an example. The main point of using symbols in a novel is to engage the readers, wanting them to continue reading, get the hidden messages across, and mainly addressing the theme.

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According to Roland Barthes “Literature is the question minus the answer. In The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories, by Tim O'Brien we are left to deal with the question of ‘What is the real truth?’ Throughout the story, we are introduced to multiple types of truth. They include physical truth, in which the story tells what the men are physically carrying. Consequently, it is also compared to emotional truth, what emotional baggage the men carry with them from place to place.

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1035 Words | 5 Pages

Your perspective is reality, true or not it is. However, when something happens and you your perspective is lost is it true that you lose your sense of reality? Or perhaps you don 't lose reality but rather gain perspective, which can be confusing in a whole other light. Author Tim O’Brien, through his narrative, The Things They Carried, emphasises the idea the perhaps there is no way to lose perspective; instead you are constantly gaining it causes more confusion while you 're still writing your story. But perhaps when you take a step back after you’ve made it through the mess the pieces (the memorable moments good and bad) seem to fall into place creating a glance “across the surface of my [your] history” (233).

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2034 Words | 9 Pages

O’Brien sets a focus more on the emotional impact the war has overall. He practically voids the notion of addressing historical events or facts. Nothing in the novel was ever told in complete truth. It primarily consisted of sentimental stories and intriguing anecdotes of the soldiers. O’Brien attains this powerful emotional appeal through the usage of vivid details such as imagery, character development, and accentuates the impact that the war had on it’s soldiers.

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448 Words | 2 Pages

When the readers gets to the chapter where O’Brien described how he killed the young man, they realized that there is no way that this didn’t happened and they are correct. But when they read further on, they see that O’Brien is stating that he didn’t kill anyone while

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