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Essay On O 'Brien's The Things They Carried'

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M2A1: Illustration Essay Applying a Literary Theory to an Assigned Story Timothy Sibley ENG102 02/04/2018 I’ve chose to analyze the many themes evident in “The Things They Carried” (O’Brien, 1990) using the reader-response literary theory with a psychoanalytical approach. In the shorty story the men at war carry a plethora of items with them, both figuratively and literally. Aside from the necessities of war i.e., weapons, protective gear, and medical bags, soldiers carry with them trinkets and items from home that remind them of what they will hopefully return to. While at war there are certain aspects soldiers silently carry with them as well. Emotional feelings such as love, longing, purpose, terror, and grief are also on their minds. The emotional burden men carry outweighs the physical burden during wartime. Lieutenant Cross carries maps and compasses and the responsibility of protecting the …show more content…

Reputation and respect is evident in The Things They Carried and is clearly a side effect of the emphasis put on friendship and weakness within Lieutenant Cross’s group of soldiers. Soldiers dislike weakness and fear being known as weak. In order to maintain their friendships protecting their reputations is a necessity. Although the main theme appears to the reader to be one of love the underlining theory is truly about friendship and the bond the soldiers share between each other. Girlfriends come and go and the soldiers fighting for “love of country” seems farfetched considering the circumstances. Although soldiers’ friendships are often based on foolishness and are a love/hate relationship only those soldiers who spend countless hours together and experience war together truly know each other and what they are going through. The bonds they form are stronger than what they would experience back home with loved

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He is conflicted with the emotional burden of loving Martha and his responsibility to his men. Cross is the Lieutenant of this platoon, meaning that he is their leader and ultimately responsible for the outcome of all their lives. Even though it is easy to see how these men need an escape to help them survive the daily task of fighting, the illusions of being somewhere else can result in additional weight being

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The Things They Carried is an ugly book. The themes and topics throughout the book are gruesome and horrific, but Tim O’Brien writes about them in such a way that portrays the Vietnam War as almost beautiful. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the chapter, “The Man I Killed” is an example of a terrific piece of writing because it utilizes thoughtful symbolism, graphic imagery, and conflict to portray the Vietnam War in an accurate way. “The Man I Killed” uses symbols, imagery, and conflict to tell an accurate war story. First, O’Brien uses symbolism throughout the book, but specifically in “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien writes about the symbol of a butterfly.

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Have you ever been in such a stressful situation while trying to think normal? In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the author describes the situations these troops are put through. Along with the situations, the author tells the audience the thoughts and feelings going on with the men. Showing that the men are affected by the situations they are exposed to. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien explains the equipment that the characters need to carry to be prepared for the worst.

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First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross faced a conflicting dilemma of love versus duty in Tim O’Brien’s short story, “The Things They Carried.” Jimmy Cross exhibited a loyalty to both the woman he loved, Martha, and to the men that he served in separate incidents in the narrative. In the beginning of the narrative, Cross found time to place himself in a state of day-dreaming about Martha because thinking about her provided an escape from reality. Because of the circumstances that Cross later found himself, his loyalties needed adjustment. He decided to place his men and his duty as their leader above anything or anyone else in the final paragraphs in order to protect his men, even at the expense of making life more difficult for himself and his men.

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When the author expresses the feelings within Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s troops we see their individual personalities. When the author used characterization, symbolism, and tone, they truly brought out the theme of physical and emotional burdens throughout “The Things They

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Soldiers create intimate and valuable relationships. Curt Lemon and Rat form a close relationship and they can trust each other “with [their lives]” (65). Yet, Rat loses Curt because soldiers frequently lose these relationships because of war’s “absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (66). Losing one’s best friend is “so incredibly sad and true” (66), but it is an everyday occurrence during war. Concluding the chapter, the narrator determines that war “is never about war”, and is solely about the “love”, “sorrow” (81), and memories shared.

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In the short story “The Things They Carried” the general theme revolved around the emotional struggles of all the men and how they dealt with issues of war, love, fear, and loss. The tale is intended to symbolize the internal warfare of soldiers in war and the mental struggles of dealing with the risk of danger on a day to day basis. Author Tim O’Brien being a Vietnam War veteran, experienced this firsthand and uses imagery and physical juxtapositions to compare both the emotional and physical baggage that the men carried throughout the war. One of the main characters in the story, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who was the leader of the platoon in the story, faced many emotional problems. He was struggling with a love interest back in the United States and torn between putting emotional energies into both the thought of her while still maintaining the wellbeing of his troops and being a respectable officer.

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The story describes the physical burdens the soldiers had to carry such as weaponry and rations, along with the emotional burdens such as love and loss (375-390). This story is significant because it gives readers an insight to the difficulties faced by soldiers that may not be recognized by many. The

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In Tim O'Brien's “Enemies” and “Friends”, O'Brien shows the effect the nature of war has on individuals and how war destroys and creates friendships. These two stories describe the relationship between two soldiers, Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen. In “Enemies”, friendship is broken over a fist fight about a stolen jackknife, which leaves Strunk with a broken nose and Jensen paranoid of whether or not Strunk’s revenge is coming. While in “Friends”, you see how the nature of war creates a bond of trust, even between people who first saw each other as enemies.

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“The Things They Carried” Essay At war, the battlefield is a dangerous place, a place where blood is stained red. It is where men and women carry physical as well as emotional loads such as grief, love, terror, longing and etc. In “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, the American novelist tells his readers about the transformations of Lieutenant Cross. At the beginning of the story, Cross was on the battlefield of the Vietnam War with his comrades. While he is there, Cross keeps thinking of Martha as a distraction from the war.

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Psychological Warfare in ​The Things They Carried Unless you have been in war or have read ​The Things They Carried​, you can't fully understand the psychological toll on a person's mind and body, you can't understand the psychological hardship soldiers go through in war. However, ​The Things They Carried​, by Tim O'Brien, is written to where it shows the overall psychological effects of war on soldiers in and out of Vietnam; as shown throughout the story, the recurring themes of trauma, love, and guilt give the clear psychological implications of war.

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In “The Thing They Carried,” Tim O’Brien describes both the physical and emotional burdens that each soldier had to carry. He describes in details and emphasizes the weight of the physical items that the soldiers had to carry. Although both the tangible and intangible weights are carried by the men, O’ Brien suggests that the intangible weights weighed more heavily on the soldiers and unlike the physical weights, they were not as easily relieved. As the weight of the physical burdens reduced, the emotional burdens of guilt, uncertainty and fear did not diminish but continued to weigh heavily on the soldiers. An analysis between the emotional and physical burdens shows that in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” the concrete items the men

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The physical burden is carried with these soldiers daily. As stated in the beginning of the short story, “First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha,” this shows that soldiers sometimes carry something that is meaningful to them with them. But, things they carried were not always meaningful they also carried necessities for example mosquito repellant, and water. An additional type of physical burden, is finding out someone who you are friends with during this war got shot.

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Over all, this story allows us to observe changes within the mentalities of army officers. First, the trauma of living in a war zone can add a significant amount of intangible weight into someone’s life. In “The Things They Carried,” we discover that Cross’s men “carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die (443).” Given that the majority of humans have experienced some form of trauma, we can understand how some men were driven to suicide and others into

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Many soldiers carry mementos from  both their home and past but, it can be inferred that none of the men are completely engulfed in the memories they bring, unlike their lieutenant. These examples of symbolism help accentuate the primary

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