Beauty In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Author Tim O’Brien once expressed, “It can be argued, for instance, that [the Vietnam] war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty….a powerful, implacable beauty—and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly”(O’Brien 77). The breathtaking yet sanguinary jungles and devastating guerilla warfare of the Vietnam War had a particular grandeur that overwhelmed its victims, and the author of The Things They Carried demonstrates that element throughout many passages in his collection of short stories. In Tim O’Brien’s historical novel The Things They Carried, he uses the clash of breathtaking beauty with horrendous imagery and grim concepts to establish the theme of the dark beauty of war through the lens of his

The writer depicts and describes the grim beauty in a somber scene, stating, “The smoke from the hooches smelled like straw. It moved in patches across the village square, not thick anymore, sometimes just faint ripples like fog….The girl went up on her toes and made a slow turn and danced through the smoke. Her face had a dreamy look, quiet and composed” (130). The child frolicking through the charred remains of her dwelling place and family leaves a peculiar feeling that the narrator intentionally places in order to capture the strange attraction and, moreover, the magnificence of war. As the girl danced through the ashes of her life, the author uses the blatant innocence of the girl to emphasize the hidden beauty that the characters find within war. O’Brien expressed, “It’s all

Tim O’Brien recounts, “I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms” (67). In this passage, the author describes Curt Lemon's ascent into a picturesque blossoming, moss covered, vine enveloped tree that glared with rays of sunshine. As the narrator paints this stunning scene, he uses it to mask the grisly death of Lemon. In “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” Rat Kiley narrates, “Late at night, when the Greenies were out on ambush, the whole rainforest seemed to stare in at them—a watched feeling—and a couple of times they almost saw her sliding through the shadows” (110). The writer uses the awe-inspiring sensation of the watchful forest to contrast and support the dark reality that a fiendish woman wearing a necklace laced with human tongues might still be stalking the expanse. He uses this scene to emphasize the theme of the horrifying beauty of war. The author clearly places an emphasis on this theme through his