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Conflict In Tim O Morrison's The Things They Carried

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Nicolas Cage states, “I think what makes people fascinating is conflict, it's drama, it's the human condition. Nobody wants to watch perfection.” Anger, Death, Violence, Chaos, the past, speaking silently in the darkness. These nouns draw our attention by the main and forefront inclination of human nature, and how our bodies are programmed to maintain focus on such events. An inescapable collision course, since the dawn of time conflict, has arisen deep within our souls, along with the obscurity that ensues, being a fundamental factor in how we cannot process the cause or reason of why individuals let negativity, personal gain, hatred, and other emotional charges take control of their mouths and body. These uncontrollable acts can be viewed …show more content…

Once, twice, a hundred, or even a million times. The complete diversity of the human race is what allows us to contemplate the “truth” of moralities and ethics that merely is a statement of what we believe is the right or wrong thing to do. The idea of conflict, in society, whether that is through physical or verbal means, is something that haunts at the shadow of our identity. The Things They Carried by Tim O’brien in the story titled, “The Man I killed” addresses the moral standards of people and how conflict is reverberating and coursing through the veins and blood pumping within their body. In Vietnam, everyone is more or less from the same background, they share the same culture and american descent, there is no major difference in religion, and they all are fixed with the notion that each one of them is patriotic for their country, to the highest degree (both the United States soldiers and the native Vietnamese …show more content…

123); this shows a completely different side of the war mind that’s implanted within these soldiers as they spend their days continuously racking up horrible and gruesome deaths of other human individuals. Azar, in this case, seems to find a sense of joy within himself as he establishes a kill. He seems to believe in the mentality that a person’s history, life story, and family play no role in war, and the simple main ideology he beholds is the “kill or be killed” point of view.
On the other hand, O’brien’s friend Kiowa tells Azar to “go away” and then proceeds to try and convince O’brien that it’s not really a big deal and that his death was justified. Kiowa talks about if O’brien would rather be in the dead man’s shoes and urges him that “there’s was nothing else that he could have done. So does this mean that this death is justified, based in the context of

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The Dentist "He kept replaying his own exploits, tacking on little flourishes that never happened" (82). Now, the question, "Which is more important—story-truth or happening-truth?" is asked. This above quote from Tim O 'Brein gently represents how a little thing called story-truth happens. The greatest difference between story and happening-truth is the simple fact that happening-truth reveals actual events that have occurred, whereas story-truth, which Tim O 'Brien, the author of The Things They Carried, heavily emphasizes, is subjectively reflecting a person 's thoughts and feelings when recounting a tale, and putting theme above all else. The importance of the two is where everything lies, where the author of the novel pushes for story

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Men went through so many tasks during the Vietnam War physically and mentally. The beginning chapters focus on training for war and being prepared for the worst. For example, when there is a sergeant in a room with the marines. The sergeant walks to the chalk board and writes “AMBUSHES ARE MURDER AND MURDER IS FUN” (36-37). The

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In war, there is a winning side and a losing side, but both suffer casualties. Afflictions are not always dealt in death and physical pain, but also emotional damage. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he emphasizes war’s capabilities to change people. When Mary Anne, a sweet, innocent, all-American girl, arrives in Vietnam to be with her soldier boyfriend, change is inevitable, and she will eventually lose her naiveté. O’Brien utilizes personification, jarring imagery, hyperbole, and pathos to convey that war shatters all innocence, no matter how hard one may try to avoid the change.

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The first solider, Azar, congratulates Tim on the kill, while the other, Kiowa, tries to rationalize the man’s death to Tim. With this context, it can be stated that the overarching theme within “The Man I Killed” is death in war, specifically its after effects on the soldiers. These after effects are illustrated through the characters Azar, Kiowa, and Tim. Azar’s character is unique because he

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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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The Things They Carried, is a lot about what all of the men carried and what it all meant to each one of them. The author describing the material things wants to give a sense of the physical burden, but the guilt of men lost and the weight of responsibility was what truly weighed them down mentally and physically through the war. The author allows the reader to realize how each of the characters dealt with their time within the war and how they coped giving them a sense of hope to survive, and how they traveled through Vietnam carrying the weight of physical burdens and the weight of responsibility, loss and guilt and the memories they will carry for the rest of their lives.

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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.

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O’Briens intended audience is people who have an interest in war, and uses mortality and death, along with morality to help the audience get a deeper understanding of what could possibly occur at war. First, O’Brien discusses how mortality and death greatly affected many of the men around him. In the chapter ” In the Field” Kiowa is gone and there is nothing they could do to save him. The

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In November of 1955, the United States entered arguably one of the most horrific and violent wars in history. The Vietnam War is documented as having claimed about 58,000 American lives and more than 3 million Vietnamese lives. Soldiers and innocent civilians alike were brutally slain and tortured. The atrocities of such a war are near incomprehensible to those who didn’t experience it firsthand. For this reason, Tim O’Brien, Vietnam War veteran, tries to bring to light the true horrors of war in his fiction novel The Things They Carried.

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Numerous scenes in the novel, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, are riddled with violence. Those horrid scenes shape the themes of a heightened mental state and revenge. The actions of the Alpha Company are driven by emotion and stress. These issues create great problems for the Company, stripping them of their civilized societal standards and leaving only natural human instinct.

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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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(p. 126). Though he does not see him as the enemy, O’Brien reacts as he had been taught to in war; to forget most of your morals and shoot before you can be shot first, a fact Kiowa points out to him. “Later, I remember, Kiowa tried to tell me that the man would 've died anyway. He told me that it was a good kill, that I was a soldier and this was a war, that I should shape up and stop staring and ask myself what the dead man would ' ve done if things were reversed” (p. 127). Soldiers are expected to forget their morals and act as a soldier should.

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“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.

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