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Brotherhood In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

974 Words4 Pages

There are many valuable things in life, and one of the most significant is friendship. To live a life deprived of the experience of friendship is simply a life without living. Throughout our lives we are always meeting new people and forming relationships that may or, may not grow into anything more serious than a casual conversation. Throughout the novel, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, friendships develop into a very serious form of brotherhood. Friendship, as well as “brotherhood” are essential parts of the novel. Love, friendship, along with brotherhood become the main source of joy and positive energy for the men of the Alpha Company at the Vietnam War. Without the compassion and support the men of Alpha Company feel for one …show more content…

Tim O’Brien thoroughly described that the men carried one another and brotherhood was the key to survival. Tim O’Brien shows us the strongest form of love through friendship. The men of Alpha Company were far from home and their loved ones. Many were forced to fight a war they didn’t want to fight with strangers. Plus, many were young men deprived of love and compassion they desired by their loved ones. Being so deprived of closeness and love, many of the men created incredibly close bonds with other men while at war. “You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood – you give it together; you take it together” (O’Brien 9). Throughout the novel, many of the men meet a handful of great friends while at Alpha Company. The men are not just friends, they are part of a tribe, they are blood brother. Some men created such close bonds with each other they believed they are soul mates with one another. “Rat pours his heart out. He says he loved the guy. He says the guy was his best friend in the world. They were like soul mates, he said, like twins or something, they had a whole lot in common (O’Brien 5). During war death is inevitable, these men, for example, Rat experiences death and loss everyday. However, it is emotional dwelling when someone so close to home dies. In this quote Rat is going crazy, his best friend and his soul mate whom he loved, Lemon, has died. And this was something Rat would have to carry like a stone on his back for the rest of his

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The short story “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, is about the experience of a team of American soldiers in the Vietnam war (Julia Guance et al. 323). O’Brien fought in the war of Vietnam himself and used writing as a way to express the realities of war (322). His works are realistic, given his personal experience at war. Each soldier in the story “The Things They Carried” carry specific objects that reflect their personality and priorities. Jimmy Cross is a twenty-four-year-old, American First Lieutenant.

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War: The Idea of Friendship In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the stories are mainly focused on the Vietnamese War and it’s effects on the soldiers. The two stories, Friends and Enemies clearly portray the personal problems faced by the soldiers during the war instead of problems in the actual war that the soldiers are fighting. In Enemies, Dave Jensen breaks Lee Strunk's nose over a stolen jackknife and is later found contemplating whether or not Strunk will get his revenge on him, causing him to become delusional. In Friends, however, both Strunk and Jensen agree to sign a pact that says if anyone of them gets hurt badly, the other will kill them.

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Although Andy Wiest's Boys of '67 and Stephen Ambrose's Band of Brothers are set in different historical periods, with the former taking place during the Vietnam War and the latter in World War II, both stories reveal similarities in the soldiers' experiences on the battlefield. These shared elements center around camaraderie, and the collective experience of trauma. However, notable differences also existed, such as the objectives of each war, the character of the conflicts, and the public perceptions surrounding them. Despite the transformative shift in warfare from World War II to the Vietnam War, a consistent theme emerges in the narratives of Wiest and Ambrose- death and dealing with trauma.

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Tenisha Pressley, Period 6 Brotherhood in the Battlefield What is more important in the line of duty than the bond between fellow soldiers? Brotherhood is one of the most necessary qualities amongst those who spend months, maybe even years, fighting for the safety of their country. Soldiers should feel safe going to combat knowing that their brothers are watching their back.

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Throughout the entire story, the narrator explains how close the men become to each other. You become brothers and you trust each other with your lives. In the chapter, The Ghost Soldiers, Tim O’Brien sees the men he was on the platoon with and is

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946 Words | 4 Pages

This bond that the soldiers form helped them to survive, and helped the men of Alpha Company to cope with the war after they returned to the United States. The bond that men form with each other in the heat of battle is incomprehensible to those who have not experienced warfare for

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863 Words | 4 Pages

In modern society, we’ve associated a number of characteristics to define what a man should be; macho, chivalrous, courageous and so tough as to never show any form of emotions. In our story we read about a troop of soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War who witness death on a daily basis, being both men and soldiers with a mission to carry out they hide their fear and other emotions behind superstitions and trinkets. The most important component to a soldier is his psyche, or his ability to think strategically through any situation. With your mind preoccupied your skill declines, which can lead to a number of things going wrong. The theme presented in “The Things They Carried” supports this stereotype while also exposing the negative impacts.

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Each soldier had to individually find ways to cope with the loss of their comrades, whom were oftentimes their best friends. For Rat Kiley, the loss of his good friend Curt Lemon to a surprise booby trap is emotionally too much for him to handle. His grief leads him to writing a heartfelt letter to Curt’s sister in an attempt to continue some form of relationship with his deceased best friend. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, as the leader of Alpha Company, blames his own daydreaming and decision making for the deaths of Ted Lavender and Kiowa. The responsibility for Ted Lavender’s death that Jimmy Cross assumes generates a shame that he carries with him for the rest of his life “like a stone in his stomach.”

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O’Brien writes, “[t]hey carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried,” (7) conveying the feelings of guilt and remorse, which adds to the mental hardships of war and the effect it has on the soldiers. This can also be seen when Tim O’Brien is fixated on the fact that he just killed a man. It is as if time stops for him, he is overflowed with thoughts and shock, which triggers this sort of guilt and shame that he ultimately has to get over and move on because this is war. War has made soldiers unable to properly process anything because of the paranoid environment and quick rhythm of war. In another instance, O’Brien showcases the power of shame on life-changing decisions.

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1100 Words | 5 Pages

Truth The main characters in The Things They Carried are soldiers, watching people die every day. To lessen their fear of death, they do not pay much respect to the dead and treat the corpses as if they are live people; they demonstrate that the soul lives on even when the body does not. One of the ways the soul lives is through stories. In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, the final chapter, “The Lives of the Dead”, is essential because it is a perfect conclusion.

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In Tim O'Brien's “Enemies” and “Friends”, O'Brien shows the effect the nature of war has on individuals and how war destroys and creates friendships. These two stories describe the relationship between two soldiers, Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen. In “Enemies”, friendship is broken over a fist fight about a stolen jackknife, which leaves Strunk with a broken nose and Jensen paranoid of whether or not Strunk’s revenge is coming. While in “Friends”, you see how the nature of war creates a bond of trust, even between people who first saw each other as enemies.

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439 Words | 2 Pages

However, the previously mentioned bonds held them together. Furthermore, the friendships gave rise to forgiveness, securing the relationships even after one had not performed to his ability. Throughout their journey, the protagonists assisted one another in times when it was depressing for all. This was due to the strong relationships between them.

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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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994 Words | 4 Pages

All of the main characters fight for friendship even if they do so in different ways and for different reasons. All of them feel in need of someone to talk to if it is about science, about what horrible things one has done or about being different and alone. Another feature is the loss of friendship in all cases. Victor loses his friends to death, and so does Walton while the creature never really “fulfilled his dream of being anyone’s true friend” (Jeray 69). This way the novel not only shows the importance of friendship and having companions but also the possible consequences of either being rejected by everyone or of losing beloved people partly even due to own

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767 Words | 4 Pages

The chapter “Friends,” is a very good chapter showing friendship. There are many details of how good of friends people can become during a war. Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk weren 't good buddies for a while but they eventually started to trust each other. “In late August they made a pact that if one of them should ever get totally fucked up- a wheelchair wound- the other guy would automatically find a way to end it,” (O’Brien, 62).

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