Diction In Tim O 'Brien's The Things They Carried'

The Things They Carried Style Analysis Essay (Revising)
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, just as the truth of a story is in the mind of a reader. Tim O'Brien uses this concept of the creative truth throughout the book The Things They Carried in connection with diction that creates ethos and imagery, connotative diction, and juxtaposition. This connection enables O’Brien’s reader to imagine the tale that O’Brien tells.
In the book, the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story” sheds light on his aim; this is where O’Brien wrote that it is not hard to tell a “true” war story, all a writer needs to do is add something embarrassing that “happened” to him/her, and people will think it's true. O’Brien shares this idea because if a writer admits

The most common words that cause emotion are forms of the word “kill”, “hopeless”, “paralyzed”, “crushing” and “sorrow”(57, 67, 109). These words can cause an array of emotion depending on the reader such as sadness, sorrow or pity towards the characters. The words listed earlier can cause different people, different emotions but all the words are negative. These negative words can cause the people to relate their emotions to that of the characters. O'Brien uses negative words to try and submerge the audience in negativity and sadness. These negative words may also not have an impact on the reader because of O’Brien’s aim, the truth of a story being in the mind of the reader. If the reader truly thinks that O’Brien is a liar, they may not be impacted by these negative words. Another way that O’Brien exposes his aim is by using

Then in the chapter called “On the Rainy River” O’Brien writes about how he at first runs away from the war draft. These two chapters are completely different and they make the reader question O’Brien’s stories. The audience does this because they do not understand how O’Brien could write about the emotional baggage and what happened in the war to the character’s looking back and reflecting on it. Then in another chapter O’Brien writes about when he first received his draft, where he runs away and goes to an old man’s cabin for awhile. These two chapters are completely different, the first chapter has a negative and sad tone to it. This is where O’Brien carries so many emotional burdens, Then the chapter “On the Rainy River” shows that O'Brien is frightened and scared of going to war so he runs away. He finds this cabin and helps the old man out there and is given a chance to run away and not come back. Although he is given the chance to run O’Brien decides to head back home and join in the fighting of the war. These two chapters are completely different and the reader can see that O’Brien has lost his innocence from the beginning of the book to the chapter “On the Rainy River”. O’Brien writes about the time he received the draft to relate to his aim of creative truth, the truth of a story is in the mind of