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Emotional Characters In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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Introduction The Things They Carried is a text where writer Tim O’Brien the stories he encountered throughout his time in the Vietnam War. These stories, traumatic as well as warm and humorous, are ones that the author will never erase from his memory. It seems that O’Brien is retelling these stories to enlighten those who have never had experience on the battlefield in order to reach a certain level of understanding and to discover repercussions that it brings onto the human condition, both physically and mentally. Evidently, he wants to convey emotion within the reader. The stories also recall the life lessons that O’Brien learned about friendship, forgiveness, respect and reputation as well as foreignness and the other. However, as the reader continues to immerse themselves within these stories, it has to …show more content…

Before the story begins, it states ‘except for a few details regarding the author 's own life, all the incidents, names, and characters are imaginary’ (O’Brien, P8). However, on the following page the author claims that the text is ‘lovingly dedicated to the men of Alpha Company’ as well as all the men that feature within the text (O’Brien, P9). Silbergleid believes that this statement ‘elevates these imaginary characters to the level of real people worthy of a dedication’ (Silbergleid, P129), therefore, blurring the line between what is fact and what is fiction. This is evident in ‘How to Tell a True War Story’ when the reader discovers that the men Curt, Rat and Mitchell are in fact fictional characters. ‘No Mitchell Sanders, you tell her. No Lemon, no Rat Kiley (O’Brien, P64). Furthermore, O’Brien created some of his characters with the intention of them being loosely based off real people in his life. For example, in an interview with Lynn Wharton, O’Brien states that the character Curt Lemon was based on an individual called Alvin Merricks, who died an instant death like Lemon (Wharton,

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The short story “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, is about the experience of a team of American soldiers in the Vietnam war (Julia Guance et al. 323). O’Brien fought in the war of Vietnam himself and used writing as a way to express the realities of war (322). His works are realistic, given his personal experience at war. Each soldier in the story “The Things They Carried” carry specific objects that reflect their personality and priorities. Jimmy Cross is a twenty-four-year-old, American First Lieutenant.

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After Lemon faints he is a complete mess. He sulks alone, isolated, just staring and cursing at the tent. Finally, embarrassment got the best of him—for the sake of his pride, and for the assurance that he hasn 't lost his manhood—he shows the truth, the true Curt Lemon, he reveals what he had the dentist do—Lemon walks into the dentist complaining of a toothache, and although the dentist could find nothing wrong he had the him rip out a perfectly good tooth; he reestablishes his personal pride in defeating his phobia and overcoming fainting. He does all of this in the name of manliness, and while doing so—introducing more

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Jack Schlachter Ms. Buyers Period 4 8 February 2023 The Things They Carried Essay Sharing stories is an important way for humans to make meaningful connections with each other. They can relate with each other and make a stronger relationship. In the book, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien shares stories about his experience in the Vietnam War as a way to connect with others and teach people about the war. The book gives good examples about telling stories and how the stories affect others. Stories help humans relate to each other and make connections.

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Tim O’Brien, in his novel The Things They Carried, provides a first-hand account of the experiences of a platoon of young American soldiers in the Vietnam War. Through the stories he tells, O’Brien is able to relate to the reader the atmospheres of the situations that the soldiers were placed in. He also emphasizes the roles of both the physical and mental “things” that he and every other soldier carried on their missions throughout the war. Many of the physical objects that the soldiers kept with them either served a vital purpose to their survival or an emotional purpose to help remind them of the things they loved.

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Love, regret, fear, and courage are all intertwined into Tim O’Brien's book, The Things They Carried. O'Brien uses his own experiences with the Vietnam war as well as stories told from his companions to create a book to show how the war affects people differently. By using his own story, he is able to have an honest outlook into the war that tells about the things that happened off of the footage that the nation could watch. The individual stories of the men are shown throughout this book to allow for a full circle story that captures most all aspects of the war, in essence, what happened other than the fighting. Instead of discussing the book as a whole, I am focusing on the main themes that are shown throughout the book.

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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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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.

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In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores the contrast between who we are and what we do, especially in “Ambush” and “The Ghost Soldiers”. In these stories, O’Brien becomes separated from his own actions and makes choices that contradict what he knows to be his personal morals and values, demonstrating how the emotional toll of war can separate a person from their “true” self. In “Ambush” (assuming the story is true), O’Brien recounts a time when he took the life of a young Vietnamese soldier who didn’t see O’Brien as he walked along a trail. O’Brien describes how the man posed no real threat to him, but something drove him to throw a grenade onto the trail.

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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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A theme The Things They Carried is the emotion and physical burden the men went through the war. The men carried so much weight on their back walking miles and miles on end through jungles and swamp like lands days on end with very little breaks or sleep. And then they have the emotional effects of war like knowing you have to kill someone to stay alive it`s killed or be killed or knowing if you die a military officer is going to knock on your day and give your mom a folded flag. But Back to the physical side of things they walk walk and walk till they can`t walk no more it feels like and they still keep on walking their bodies are drained and exhausted their bodies and dead.

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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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It was rigged 105 round…(p84)”. According to the narrator, if Lemon had a chance to tell how he died he would tell that sunlight beautifully killed him. Not a detonator, because he didn’t see one. The thing he saw was the light. He really did so it’s true.

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“The things they carried” is a story that holds not even the slightest bit back and lays it out there for us. It tells the real straight forward story of Tim O’ Brien, And his alpha platoon mates. The psychological lens would be perfect for the chapter “Speaking of courage”, For the simple fact that this chapter is about O’Brien is trying to sort out everything that has happened in nam and what is happening till this day. By putting a psychological lens on the chapter “Speaking of Courage” is a good way to get into the head of Tim O’Brien and his platoon, to understand why he was driving around the lake, Norman, and how he was going to tell the story to the guy at Mamma’s Burgers, Norman and the silver star.

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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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Originally published in 1990, The Things They Carried is a collection of war stories that took place during the Vietnam War. Due to its accurate and honest depiction of war, it has been banned for crude language, violence, drug use, and sexual innuendo. The author, Tim O’Brien, was born in Austin, Minnesota in 1946. Due to his service in the United States military during the Vietnam War, O’Brien is able to depict the war in a more graphic, and realistic manner.

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