Emotions In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Tim O’Brien deals with hardship during the war and after the war. He has trouble coping with it, he uses writing as a way to heal himself. Tim O’Brien writes about the man he supposedly killed. “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was a star-shaped hole – “Think it over” Kiowa said. Then later he said, “Tim, it’s a war” – Then he said, “Maybe you better lie down a minute” ”(O'Brien 118-120). This incident of seeing the man O’Brien killed shows how Tim feels guilt and how the image of the dead body stays with him. Kiowa needed to comfort him numerous times. Tim also remembers cleaning a blown-up soldier’s body. “I remember pieces of skin and something wet and yellow that must’ve been the intestines. The gore was horrible and stays with me” (O’Brien 79).

It haunts him. Tim counters these emotions, by writing. Writing helps Tim process his emotions and memories of the war. Tim O’Brien explains what telling stories feels like to him. “Telling stories seemed a natural, inevitable process, like clearing the throof at. Partly catharsis, partly communication, it was a way of grabbing people by the shirt and explaining exactly what had happened to me” (O’Brien 151-152). Tim explains the feeling of what writing a war story does to him. Writing war stories for the world to see helped him cope with the trauma of the war. It helps him express his emotions and establish a barrier from the atrocities he had witnessed. Tim O’Brien uses his passion of writing to cope with the trauma and atrocities, it helps him settle his grief and