ipl-logo

Imagery And Symbolism In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

1041 Words5 Pages

“I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth”(O’Brien 171). In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien describes his experience and many other soldiers experiences in the Vietnam war. This book is based off his memory, imagination and storytelling which depicts many perspectives of life before, during and after war. Tim O’Brien uses imagery and symbolism to address that war destroys innocent people and at the same time soliders loss of innocence. O’Brien uses the imagery of the description of the man he killed and the prank of scaring Bobby to show soldiers loss of innocence. In “The Man I Killed” O’Brien kills a young vietnamese soldier, he's in shock and can't stop staring at the …show more content…

His health was poor, his body small and fragile. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics”(O’Brien 118-119). O’Brien uses imagery to describe to the reader that war is a very brutal place and some of the choices soldiers make linger after they happen. He uses this story in particular to show his fixation on the young man's life to demonstrate his quilt, but at the same time distance himself to dual the pain. He knows he is responsible for the man's death and feels guilty but he already knows his innocence was lost a long time ago. In“The …show more content…

The result of this is O’Brien almost dies of shock and when he finally comes over to him he doesn’t treat his wounds correctly. O’Brien has to be on bed rest and can’t participate so he feels he is longer part of the team. He wants Bobby to pay for what he done so Azar and him plan to scare Bobby really badly. “I’d come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person, a college grad… all the credentials, but after seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had crushed under the weight of simple daily realities. I’d turned mean inside… I now felt a deep coldness inside me, something dark and beyond reason... I was capable of evil… We called the enemy ghosts. ‘Bad night,’ we’d say… You don’t try to scare in broad daylight. You wait. Because the darkness squeezes you inside yourself, you get cut off from the outside world, the imagination takes over. You see ghost. Bullshit you tell yourself. But then you remember the guys who died: Curt Lemon, Kiowa, Ted Lavender, a half-dozen others whose

Show More
Related
845 Words | 4 Pages

Many Vietnamese people who weren’t part of the war were killed. In 1968 more than 500 unarmed Vietnamese people were killed in My Lai. This event is known as the My Lai Massacre. Though this event was not mentioned in the book, innocent Vietnamese people were killed and made fun of in some of the stories that Tim O’Brien wrote. For example in the story “The Lives of the Dead” a village was attacked.

Read More
1097 Words | 5 Pages

62. O’Brien was essentially furiated with Jorgenson, as Jorgenson selfishly hesitated to provide medical attention when O’Brien was shot during a battle. O’Brien was traumatized from event as he briefly met the brink of his demise, while he demonstrated immense sorrow from his anguishing pains and the thought to death. O’Brien distinctly remembers this fatal incident and blames Jorgenson for his traumatizing experience. O’Brien’s wound also caused him immense pain after the incident, as he could barely apply pressure to his bottom.

Read More
1365 Words | 6 Pages

In If I Die in a Combat Zone, author Tim O’Brien argues that the Vietnam War was unjust by expressing his disapproval of the war through his own moral beliefs, sharing the descriptions of deaths in Vietnam of the innocent citizens, and by describing how much the war impacted himself and others negatively. In the beginning of the book, O’Brien openly stated his beliefs on the war. He believed it was wrongly accepted and unjust, but he battled his own opinions with society’s views anyway (18). Constantly, O’Brien discussed within his own head about the true definition of bravery and courage (147).

Read More
705 Words | 3 Pages

Although the soldier he killed was an enemy soldier, instead of vilifying him he was able to humanize the man. O’Brien was able to describe the physical appearance of the soldier and imagine her life before war. The author was able to portray an emotional connection and made the line between friend and enemy almost vanish. This was able to reveal the natural beauty of shared humanity even in the context of war’s horror. O’Brien is able to find the beauty in the midst of this tragic and horrible event.

Read More
994 Words | 4 Pages

In this battle, it is clearly expressed that many people are dying for uncertain reasons. Another example of the soldiers horrific experience is represented in how desensitized the soldiers become to violence and danger. Such as in chapter seven, when LZ gator was put under mortar fire and O’Brien was the first one to the barracks because most of the other soldiers were drunk and weren’t alarmed at all (88-89). These soldiers has been through so much fear and danger that they turn to drowning their pain in alcohol to forget. This level of mental trauma and desensitization to immediate danger proves that O’Brien is arguing that the Vietnam war was a horrific occurrence.

Read More
686 Words | 3 Pages

Controversy of the Iraq War sparked an ethical conversation that was similar to the Vietnam War, authors such as Tim O’Brien and Chris Kyle share their primary accounts on their thoughts of war. In 1990, about 15 years after the Vietnam war ended, Tim O’Brien publishes his work of fiction called, The Things They Carried. The Things They Carried was a melancholy, detailed collection of short stories that follows the protagonist, Tim O’Brien and his company of men before, during and after the Vietnam War. Later in 2012, after his tour of duty in Iraq, Chris Kyle publishes his memoir of his accounts in Iraq. American Sniper is a patriotic, straightforward novel that explains Kyle’s thought process while he’s at the Iraq War.

Read More
648 Words | 3 Pages

The Veracity of War One who is inexperienced and uneducated with war can have many thoughts and opinions about the subject, but only those who have experienced war can understand its true meaning, or lack thereof. In 1990, Tim O’Brien published an appalling, loathsome collection of short stories called The Things They Carried. O’Brien’s experiences in the Vietnam war is what influenced him to write the truth about war, or his version of the truth. O’Brien depicted this by describing his own warped and questionable story; “The Man I Killed.” Chris Kyle, another American author, later wrote in 2012 an enthralling, morbid memoir called American Sniper.

Read More
1292 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
543 Words | 3 Pages

In the chapter when he describes the man he kills, he talks about the state of the dead body by saying, “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole…the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him” (O’Brien Chapter 11). This brutal and horrifying imagery displays an irrefutable element of truth to O’Brien’s writing. Not only does this imagery highlight the truth to his writing, but it also sheds light on the brutal truth about the war in Vietnam. By using imagery as such a strong rhetorical device in his writing, he gives the average person a taste of just how barbaric and cruel Vietnam felt for the people who experience the war first hand on either side of the fighting. Tim O’Brien gives a very detailed and intense description of his time fighting in Vietnam during their war with America.

Read More
1509 Words | 7 Pages

The author was writing the story “The Things They Carried” expressed so many thoughts and feelings about what the soldiers had faced, they showed their feelings and duties, life or death, and overall fear and dedication. This story shows the theme of the physical and emotional burdens that everyone is going through in the war. By showing his readers what the soldier’s daily thoughts are and how they handle what is going on around them. Tim O’Brien expresses this theme by using characterization, symbolism, and tone continuously. In the story, physical and emotional burdens plagued several characters as they all had baggage weighing them down.

Read More
886 Words | 4 Pages

O’Brien goes into great depth in this small quote on how loss of innocence and war can affect people in the war. The quote “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t” shows how war is so different from what any human experiences at home. After that small quote he follows it up by bringing up how you have to use normal stuff to show how crazy these things are and how much of a pole it can have on somebody during a war. The way that war is treated for many is mostly the mental part that is struggling. But for many "War is hell, but that's not half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love.

Read More
1504 Words | 7 Pages

Even after all these years, O’Brien is still unable to get the images of Vietnam out of him head, specifically of the man he killed. In the novel, he repeats the description of the man numerous times, almost to the point of excess, saying,“he was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole” (124).

Read More
1005 Words | 5 Pages

Tim O’Brien is a writer that, while impressive, can be described as indulgent with his words; going on for pages at a time on one topic and not sparing a single detail. This of course is part of his charm. If you look to the first four pages of “The Man I Killed” in his The Things I Carried, in order to show the obsession, feelings, and shock that can come from killing someone, O’Brien makes use of repetition, tone, and appeal to logos. Firstly, throughout the chapter, the reader is to repeatedly come across descriptions or inferences of the man Tim O’Brien killed.

Read More
645 Words | 3 Pages

(p. 126). Though he does not see him as the enemy, O’Brien reacts as he had been taught to in war; to forget most of your morals and shoot before you can be shot first, a fact Kiowa points out to him. “Later, I remember, Kiowa tried to tell me that the man would 've died anyway. He told me that it was a good kill, that I was a soldier and this was a war, that I should shape up and stop staring and ask myself what the dead man would ' ve done if things were reversed” (p. 127). Soldiers are expected to forget their morals and act as a soldier should.

Read More
688 Words | 3 Pages

He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.

Read More

More about Imagery And Symbolism In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Related Topics

Open Document