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Doing The Right Thing In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Have you ever felt ashamed of doing the right thing? In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, narrator Tim O’Brien battles the differences of doing the right thing because he wants to do it or because he was a coward. O’Brien’s shame and guilt associated with the vietnam war influenced his decision to fight or flight. Tim O’Brien was drafted to fight in a war he doesn’t believe in. His principles were telling him to run away from the war, but he was too ashamed not to fight. Being a soldier was well respected in his conservative hometown, and not fighting would cause disgrace to fall upon his family. Despite his morals being against it, O’Brien decided to go war and fight, “I survived,” he explained, “but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war” (O’Brien 79). Although O’Brien was against fighting in the war, he still fought because he was ashamed and afraid that he would be scorned if he did not. In the end, Tim O’Brien lets his shame win over his morals,because he believed the strongest thing would have been to run away, but instead he chose the weaker option. …show more content…

In order to prove his bravery to himself and his comrades because “the embarrassment must’ve turned a screw in his head” (O’Brien 84) Lemon goes to the dentist’s tent in the middle of the night and orders that he pull out a healthy tooth. Curt Lemon did not need to pull out a healthy tooth, but because he was ashamed of what his comrades thought of him previously fainting at the dentist, he believed he needed to redeem himself. By eliminating his fear, Lemon proves to himself and others that pride overcomes

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He tells an elaborate story with six men being out in the field, hearing noises that should not be able to be heard up in the mountaintops, and call in a strike on their location. After the strike, they head back to their base and colonel but do not say a word. O’Brien, anticipating there is a moral, asks, “’All right’ I said, ‘what’s the moral?’ ‘Forget it.’ ‘No, go ahead.’

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This quote is Important because Tim O 'Brien is explaining how he felt like every eye in his town was on him. Felt embarrassed because he didn 't wanted to go to war. He could hear people screaming at him,Traitor ! he couldn 't endure the mockery or the disgrace or the patriotic ridicule .And right then he Submitted.

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Synthesis Essay Tim O’Brien wrote the book The Things They Carried 20 years after he returned from war, making him the protagonist of the novel. O’Brien felt that writing down his stories from the war brought him closer to it, and the people he came to know from the war. Bringing himself closer to the past allowed O’Brien to gain closure for the tragedies he witnessed. His novel allows readers to gain a new perspective on war, since many opposed the Vietnam War when it happened. O’Brien gives readers a closer look inside the war to show the impact that it has on veterans.

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In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the reader receives insight as to what soldiers experienced during the Vietnam War and what thoughts consumed their minds in those times of hardship and heartache. As Americans, we typically picture military men and women as emotionally and physically strong, while in reality, that may not be the case. They deal with more emotional and physical trauma than we come to understand. People who carry physical or emotional burdens tend to seek some kind of release or do something to feel relieved of their burdens. O’Brien uses stories about the men in his platoon to depict how soldiers are bound by their own emotional weights, and each have a different way of trying to release themselves from those tensions.

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What’s more powerful, the truth or a lie? How are we able to tell the difference? It’s all from a person’s perspective and the way we choose to spin the story. There is no way to identify the real situation unless you were there to witness the event. Throughout the novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien there is a discussion over whether he is using fiction or nonfiction.

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(O’Brien 188) He had built a relationship with the platoon and when he was sent to base camp, he felt that he lost that relationship. He related with them and when he got shot, he lost that relationship. This is why it is important to tell stories so that you can remember the connections you had with people.

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In the Novel The Things They Carried, the author, Tim Obrien recalls multiple stories during one of the most devastating wars in United States history. Through storytelling, Obrien casts light upon the horrifying reality of the Vietnam war and the struggles that Obrien’s men encounter, as well as all the other soldiers. Obrien uses the novel to represent the paradox that war is both horrible and beautiful. Obrien displays this through Ted Lavenders death, Curt lemons death, and the killing of the baby water buffalo. Obrien portrays the paradox that war is both horrible and beautiful through the death of Ted Lavender.

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The author’s thesis, “And if they made it home alive, they carried unrelenting images of a nightmarish war that history is only beginning to absorb.” The author showed this by explaining what was going through Cross’ mind at the beginning and how it changes into guilt after losing one of his men, he then lives with that loss while believing his daydreaming and distractedness caused him to lose his men. Another time where he proved his thesis is when O’Brien tells of when a man nicknamed Lemon was killed. He recalls that a joke was told, he took a half step then a booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree. The memory of how it happened remains vivid and with thorough details and recalling the sequence of events that led to it, even after 20 years, some images cannot be so easily forgotten.

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‘’I was a coward. I went to the war’’ Pg187. In the short story, ‘’On The Rainy River’’ by Tim O’Brien, The protagonist faces a difficult life decision, he did not want to conform to society the way others wanted him to. He wanted to keep his personal beliefs. Tim O’Brien does not want to conform no matter how vital it is that he should.

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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.

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The Complex Emotions Of War The amount of feelings soldiers experience during and after war affect their actions for the rest of their life. Tim O’Brien is able to explain the complexity and impact of these many emotions in his novel, The Things They Carried. The soldiers feel an unbelievable range of emotions, but the ones with the most impact are guilt and obligation. Throughout the novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the themes obligation and guilt build off each other and are shown through the soldiers’ actions and emotions in different situations.

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In the short story, “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien, the author develops the idea that when an individual experiences a feeling of shame and humiliation, they often tend to neglect their desires and convictions to impress society. Tim, the narrator, starts off by describing his feeling of embarrassment, “I’ve had to live with it, feeling the shame”, before even elaborating on the cause of the feeling. Near the end of the story, he admits he does not run off and escape to Canada because it had nothing to do with his, “mortality...Embarrassment, that’s all it was”. The narrator experiences this feeling of intense shame and then he decides that he will be “a coward” and go to war. His personal desire is that he wishes to live a normal life and could never imagine himself charging at an enemy position nor ever taking aim at another human being.

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Despite his past actions or fears, a man can carry on the legacy of honor. In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, the young men struggle with not only their lives as soldiers, but also with the weight of their reputations amongst themselves. They desperately want to be men, and being a man means they must be honorable. However, honor is the perception of his character, and it is only granted when a likeable man accepts his actions, and doles out justice as he sees fit.

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Courage The dictionary definition of courage is “strength in the face of pain of grief.” Throughout the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the common idea of courage is expressed with different meanings as each character interprets courage differently.

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War was so much more than just war to O’Brien and he able to share this through his writing. " But this is true: stories can save us. ... in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world." (page

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