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Emotional and psychological effects of war on soldiers
“The Man I Killed” by Tim O’Brien essay
“The Man I Killed” by Tim O’Brien essay
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As Tim O'Brien discusses Curt Lemon's death, he effectively highlights the underlying paradoxes of a war story's truths by telling the same story in three accounts that each differ in diction, mood, tone, and sometimes imagery. For example, in the first paragraph, O'Brien utilizes a neutral, objective tone as he briefly lists the events before, during, and after Lemon's death. How so? O'Brien implicates his staunch neutrality in the middle of the first paragraph, where he nonchalantly recants, "He [Curt Lemon] was playing catch with Rat Kiley, laughing, and then he was dead." Here O'Brien seems to be playing with the audience's emotions, as he intentionally uses phrases such as "playing catch" and "laughing" to indicate vibrancy and child-like
1) In this quote, the term being used is metaphor because Life and Game are two completely different things but they are being compared to each other like if they are similar. 2) I think the author’s purpose for using this term is that he explains that Holden feels alone because he doesn’t feel like he is winning. 3) This quote revolves around the overall theme because it shows that Holden is isolated from everybody around him. 4) • I really like this dislike this idea because Holden is wrong you need to play according to the rules to win not be on the winning side. • I think this idea seems important because it is an inspiration quote to live by even though Holden doesn’t believe it; this is how life goes it is in reality.
Fearlessness by the POW’s was expressed in Louie’s own words. Isolated throughout the whole situation, Louie 's family was delighted to see him come home. Even though his family was in the dark and was even told that there beloved son, and brother, was dead, they knew him too well to know that he wouldn 't fight until the very end. Sylvia, Louie’s sister, said once, “ ‘None of us believed it.
This quote from “ On the River of Raining.” This quote is written by Tim O’Brien. He was describing that how he make his decisions to go on war. Even Though he wants to escape from it. This quote is very important because these is when O'Brien make his final decisions to go a war.
It was Kiowa-he knew that. The sound was ragged and clotted up, but even so he knew the voice. A strange gargling sound”. O’Brien creates tension between communication and death in this instance by showing that even if the men were to follow Kiowa’s lead and open themselves up to each other, they still would not be able to rationalize the war. The men all come up with different reasons for Kiowa’s death.
In the short story, “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien focuses on this to show that everyone fighting in a war has a story. He spends the story describing the man he killed and searching for justification of his actions. He carries around guilt with him because of it, and his fellow soldiers try to help him justify and come to terms with his action by saying things like, “You want to trade places with him? Turn it all upside down= you want that? I mean, be honest,” (126) and “Tim, it’s a war.
In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the author retells the chilling, and oftentimes gruesome, experiences of the Vietnam war. He utilizes many anecdotes and other rhetorical devices in his stories to paint the image of what war is really like to people who have never experienced it. In the short stories “Spin,” “The Man I Killed,” and “ ,” O’Brien gives reader the perfect understanding of the Vietnam by placing them directly into the war itself. In “Spin,” O’Brien expresses the general theme of war being boring and unpredictable, as well as the soldiers being young and unpredictable.
(page 68). This is why Tim O’Brien writes the way he does. He wants the reader to believe his story and get a sense of what war is truly
This quote epitomizes the trauma caused by war. O’Brien is trying to cope, mostly through writing these war stories but has yet to put it behind him. He feels guilt, grief, and responsibility, even making up possible scenarios about the life of the man he killed and the type of person he was. This
Tim O’Brien never lies. While we realise at the end of the book that Kiowa, Mitchell Sanders and Rat Kiley are all fictional characters, O’Brien is actually trying to tell us that there is a lot more truth hidden in these imagined characters than we think. This suggests that the experiences he went through were so traumatic, the only way to describe it was through the projection of fictional characters. O’Brien explores the relationship between war experiences and storytelling by blurring the lines between truth and fiction. While storytelling can change and shape a reader’s opinions and perspective, it might also be the closest in helping O’Brien cope with the complexity of war experiences, where the concepts like moral and immorality are being distorted.
Hidden somewhere within the blurred lines of fiction and reality, lies a great war story trapped in the mind of a veteran. On a day to day basis, most are not willing to murder someone, but in the Vietnam War, America’s youth population was forced to after being pulled in by the draft. Author Tim O’Brien expertly blends the lines between fiction, reality, and their effects on psychological viewpoints in the series of short stories embedded within his novel, The Things They Carried. He forces the reader to rethink the purpose of storytelling and breaks down not only what it means to be human, but how mortality and experience influence the way we see our world. In general, he attempts to question why we choose to tell the stories in the way
The human condition is full of paradoxes and double meanings. We can commit the most shocking and terrible acts, but we can complete the most virtuous and honorable feats. Ishmael Beah describes the appalling and violent behavior he and other children exhibited toward the human life during his time in the Sierra Leonean civil war in his memoir, A Long Way Gone. Beah also details the forgiveness and kindness of complete strangers that helped him become the man that fate meant him to be. Homo sapiens are complex creatures brimming with irony and surprises.
The Vietnam War leaves a legacy of moral confusion with each and every soldier who serves. Soldiers are fighting for a cause they do not necessarily believe in, killing people who do not necessarily deserve it, and watching their brothers die beside them. Tim O’Briens’ book, The Things They Carried, illustrates the soldiers struggle to define morality throughout the confusion of the war. On the Rainy River, Tim O’Brien faces what he feels is his moral obligation to answer his country’s call and fight in Vietnam, and a personal moral issue with the reason for the war.
Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can 't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can 't make them undead” (38-39). Because O’Brien had witnessed so much death and destruction he knew how important it was to have all the facts first.
This shows how the sniper’s actions without thought affect him for the worse. O’Flaherty establishes the theme of “The Sniper” by using description and irony. After the sniper turns over the dead body, he realizes what he has done. He was not thinking when he shot the enemy.
