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Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: Character Analysis

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‘The things they carried,' a book by Tim O'Brien is a collection of many short stories that includes an extensive range of complex characters that revolve around a similar setting and subject. A character analysis of the book revamps the critical thinking of the readers who witness a steady development of characters from simple to complex forms as the stories forge ahead. The development of characters in the book has been focused on a physical, intellectual, emotional and social development. The book contains many characters who are represented in distinct forms due to disparate reasons that enhance the reader's grip to the plots featured.

O'Brien is the most convoluted and complex character in the book, mainly because we observe him at three …show more content…

Jimmy Cross. The Lieutenant serves as a metaphor for the war; to be specific, it's hollow structure. Similar to the war, the lieutenant is characterized by an inadequacy of definitive goal. Lt. Cross is the leader of the Alpha Company. As the leader, he is supposed to be an able leader who provides his troops with concise instructions to gain a substantial and measurable advantage over their enemy. Nonetheless, the nature of the war in Vietnam makes this leadership impossible considering the fact the goals of the war are obfuscated and undefined. Similar to the operations of the war, Lt. Cross shows inadequacy in fulfilling his role. Moreover, Cross is a powerless leader because he underwent the traditional training that focused on following standard operating procedures that had been pre-decided, rather than adapting to the current environment. Lt. Cross’s other character shortcoming is his emotional and personal inability to lead the Alpha Company. Cross zealously guards a picture of a girl named Martha, who is not even his girlfriend, to continue with his strong linkage to love as well as his livelihood. However, he fails to remember the connection between love and war in the plot. He depends upon his love for Martha as a huge escape from the reality of war. Unable to handle the combination of being in love as well as being in the war at the same time, his love for Martha arrays itself in his mind as fiction. More so his duties as a soldier are affected by this incidence. Loving makes him resist his leadership

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205 Words | 1 Pages

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, of the Alpha Company, carries various reminders of his love for Martha, a girl from his college in New Jersey who has given no indication of returning his love. Cross carries her letters in his backpack and her good-luck pebble in his mouth. After a long day’s march, he unwraps her letters and imagines the prospect of her returning his love someday. Martha is an English major who writes letters that quote lines of poetry and never mention the war. Though the letters are signed “Love, Martha” Cross understands that this gesture should not give him false hope.

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817 Words | 4 Pages

“The Things They Carried” Headline: What O’Brien and his team carried both physically and mentally will shock you Newspaper Section: This article would fit the world section of the newspaper. Single-Sentence Summary: Tim O’Brien the protagonist and the narrator of the story is describing lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who is active in Vietnam however Cross is preoccupied thinking about a girl called Martha whom he dated prior to the war. Explanation: This quotation from “The Things They Carried” provides an opinion on why men go to war. O’Brien claims that men who go to war are cowards, not as heroes. They go because they are forced to go and because they didn’t have the bravery to refuse to go.

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1113 Words | 5 Pages

Jimmy cross is again the perfect example of a person taking responsibility to lead his partisans through this very important time that is war. " He preferred to view his men not as units but as human beings. and Kiowa had been a splendid human being, the very best, intelligent and gentle and quite-spoken" (164) from the book it’s clearly shown that Jimmy had never intended to these men in the war and only signed up for it for his friend back at college, so he obviously has to take this huge responsibility since they picked him to be the Lieutenant and the leader "there was no way lieutenant cross would allow such a good man to be lost under the slime of a shit field" (164) The soldiers of course also had responsibility to be courageous, to be brave. It doesn’t matter for who or what they were in the war for, but the fact that they were taking a part of it as being soldiers made them responsible for their lives and for the lives of all the soldiers around them.

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1073 Words | 5 Pages

November 22, 1963 will always be a day to remember. President John F. Kennedy was riding in a motorcade in Dallas Texas. Where he was shot twice, one in the back of the neck and the other hit him on the bottom right side of his head. The governor of Texas JOhn Connally was also struck by one of the bullets in the chest but he recovered from his injuries. The shooting took place at 12:30 and about 30 minutes after he was pronounced dead at the Park Memorial Hospital.

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705 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the author skillfully presents a paradox about war and how it is both horrible and beautiful. Through O’Brien’s vivid storytelling and sorrowful anecdotes, he is able to demonstrate various instances which show both the horrible and beautiful nature of war. Within the vulnerability of the soldiers and the resilience found in the darkest of circumstances, O’brien is able to show the uproarious emotional landscape of war with a paradox that serves as the backbone of the narrative. In the first instance, O’Brien explores the beauty in horror within the chapter “Love.”

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620 Words | 3 Pages

“The Things They Carried” is a short story created by Tim O’Brien. O’Brien tells, from the third person’s point of view, about soldiers and the items they carried during a war. He describes the weight of each object and gives clues or reason to why that soldier may tote them. One of the minor characters he introduces is a man named Henry Dobbins. In the text, O’Brien points out twice that Henry was a big man and show how it influenced few of the items he carried.

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1147 Words | 5 Pages

People all across the world carry a variety of objects and emotions. Specifically, in the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’ Brien characters carry certain objects that act as coping mechanisms throughout the war. Three characters that dealt with the Vietnam War through the use of objects were Henry Dobbins, Jimmy Cross, and Kiowa. Henry Dobbins is described as being a large bodied man and that is why he is company’s machine gunner. In addition to carrying his machine gun along with the ammo strapped across his chest, he wears his girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck.

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1292 Words | 6 Pages

Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

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1009 Words | 5 Pages

Cross blames himself, knowing “He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead…” (p. 121). First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is distracted by his infatuation for Martha, which ultimately results in Ted Lavender’s death, forcing Cross to realize his fantasies for Martha are wrong and that he is not fulfilling his duties as a lieutenant. Lieutenant Cross is inattentive to the war and his responsibilities because he is unable and unwilling to stop thinking about his adoration for Martha.

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934 Words | 4 Pages

Tim O’Brien states, “Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war” (O’Brien 16). In this quote, Tim O’Brien explains that since Jimmy Cross blames himself about Ted Lavender’s death, he will always be in lieutenant’s head. Thus, the lieutenant will always feel the guilt. With this, Tim O’Brien makes the reader think that Jimmy Cross is the person to blame since he is the head of the group and he has to pay more attention to his plans. Having questions about his love, Martha, in his mind instead of being careful about his men is the reason of him feeling guilty that “the lieutenant’s in some deep hurt” (17).

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648 Words | 3 Pages

Jimmy Cross is the first lieutenant who carries pictures and letters from Martha, the woman he loves who—sadly—does not love him back. The pictures and letters from Martha symbolize Jimmy’s longing to be loved and comforted. It is ironic that although he is the first lieutenant who is expected to take charge and lead others, yet he never took charge of his own love life. This is a regret and burden Cross carries to the end of the story. “It was very sad, he thought.

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434 Words | 2 Pages

The lieutenant was charged with delivering an important message to a Cuban general. The book was seen as the perfect portrayal of loyalty and obedience. There are multiple tactical lessons that can be taken from this book/essay, not only to include how individual ethics can create an enormous impact.

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109 Words | 1 Pages

In Tim O’Brien’s, “The Things They Carried ”, the story is set during the Vietnam war, the story’s main focus is on Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his one sided love for a girl named Martha. O’Brien also mentions the other men in Jimmy Cross’ squad. ,even though O’Brien never mentions much more than what the names of the men were and what they carried, you could still tell a lot about the men by just what O’Brien says. For example “Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms,” (1002) From this you can tell that sex was important to Sanders because he felt the need to bring condoms to war with

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1178 Words | 5 Pages

A lot happens in Tim O 'Brien short story "The Things They Carried", at first, the reader speculates what the short story is about and why it is called "The Things They Carried". The narrator Tim O 'Brien tells and describes all the things that the men have to carry while "in-country" during the Vietnam War in the1960 's. The text 's artistic value comes from its plot, characters, conflict, and style. In the plot of the story the protagonist, Tim O 'Brien starts by describing circumstances that happened while he was in Vietnam. In the beginning of "The Things They Carried" we are introduced to each character by the things they carry.

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925 Words | 4 Pages

Literary analysis America’s war heroes all have the same stories to tell but different tales. Prescribed with the same coloring page to fill in, and use their methods and colors to bring the image to life. This is the writing style and tactic used by Tim O’Brien in his novel, “The Things They Carried”. Steven Kaplan’s short story criticism, The Undying Certainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, provides the audience with an understanding of O’Brien’s techniques used to share “true war” stories of the Vietnam War. Kaplan explains the multitude of stories shared in each of the individual characters, narration and concepts derived from their personal experiences while serving active combat duty during the Vietnam War,

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