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Immaturity: The Things They Carried

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Immaturity, by definition, is emotionally undeveloped; juvenile; childish. When taking the term “younger” into consideration, certain people may come up with different ages where they believe someone is allowed to be immature. Others argue men are the most immature of the bunch, and men may never fully mature, whether out of love for a person they claim as not mature, ever, or out of hate, or disrespect. Since draft men were more commonly in their late teens, they dealt with the horror and tragedy that is war, through immature actions. The first example, and the first story chronologically, would be the story Spin. This story starts out with a soldier being horrifically exploded and dying, but instead O’Brien describes the scene through his perception as being beautiful and peaceful, but then the focus of the story changes and focuses on the “playful things” that Lt. Jimmy Cross’ platoon often acted out, since these soldiers were almost all about 18 to 20 years old, which basically means these soldiers were trying to find their own childish fun in the center of an environment with hostility, …show more content…

The baby buffalo not making a sound makes Rat Kiley even more of a torturer, and a monster for terrorizing little, helpless, cute animals. The summary of the point of view trying to be made is soldiers, who dealt with the stress and horror of war often unleashed their feelings by hurting other people or animals, or doing things, that seem very childish, but it helps them personally to deal with all of their problems, whether it’s problems from back home, or problems they face every day through the

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Like what you ate for breakfast and who ranked up you think what soldiers go through nowadays and why they act so different when they come back because of how much war changes you. This depiction of war that the writer Walter Dean Myers shows us everything these soldiers go through and how it changes a man you could be a nonviolent man and never believe in god but once you're thrown in war your whole life will be

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O’brien’s use of Pathos is so critical to his ability to get his message across because if an audience is experiencing feels of remorse, they are more likely to listen. So by O’brien starting the chapter with a an emotional story, he is encouraging the reader to listen more carefully to his overall message. O’brien’s use of ethos throughout the chapter also aids him in showing the reader how difficult it is to tell a true war story. In the middle of the chapter, after O’brien tells us that true war stories have no moral, we learn about the time Rat had an outburst. Rat “stepped back and shot [the baby buffalo] through the right front knee” (o’brien 75).

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This chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”, showed us how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were dealing with the war both physically and psychologically. It also shows us how the Tim O'Brien behaved and felt when he was shot, wounded and had a bacteria infection on his butt and how the war changed the way he thought, and viewed the other soldiers around him. This chapter also contain a lot of psychological lens. From the way Tim O’Brien felt when he was shot and separated from his unit to a new unit to when he wanted revenge on Bobby Jorgenson for almost “killing” him.

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The person had to deal with death and the reality of war under the worst case scenario. Bob “Rat” Kiley was that soldier and one of the many soldiers that left something in the war. He had lost his friend Curt Lemon and that’s the first sign that the war has been turning to be painful for him. This coping mechanism for the death was to write letters to lemon’s sister and he shot a baby Water Buffalo. This coping mechanism is seen in the chapter “How to tell a true war story”, shows how he has been affected and explained the toll the war had taken on him.

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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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Firstly, both of the authors’ stories end with the protagonists surviving the war, but making them feel regretful and unworthy of living. O’Brien survives after being a soldier during the

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In a scene where Curt Lemon accidentally steps on a mine and is torn into many pieces, his closest comrade, Rat Kiley, has trouble grieving the loss of his friend. In a furious state, Kiley tortures a water buffalo. This scene represents the emotional and physical torture the men in Vietnam are subjected to. Both the soldiers in Vietnam and the water buffalo are in a position where their lives are out of their control. Just as the water buffalo was tortured to death, most of the men in Alpha Company feel helpless in their situation.

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Rather than describing life before the war and going from there, O’Brien keeps the story exciting by using flashbacks and flash-forwards all throughout the book. Also, “The Swimmer,” by John Cheever, has an interesting use of time. At the beginning of the short story, “it was one of those midsummer Sundays” (Cheever 1) when Neddy Merrill decides to swim across all of the pools in the route to his house. Time becomes confusing because, although his journey home should have occurred during an afternoon, when he nears his home “he smelled… some stubborn autumnal fragrance” (Cheever 8) and the water he goes in is icy cold (Cheever 9). The changing of seasons in one afternoon challenges the use of a normal time frame.

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Throughout the ages, wars have wreaked havoc and caused great destruction that lead to the loss of millions of lives. However, wars also have an immensely destructive effect on the individual soldier. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, one is able to see exactly to what extent soldiers suffered during World War 1 as well as the effect that war had on them. In this essay I will explain the effect that war has on young soldiers by referring to the loss of innocence of young soldiers, the disillusionment of the soldiers and the debasement of soldiers to animalistic men. Many soldiers entered World War 1 as innocent young boys, but as they experienced the full effect of the war they consequently lost their innocence.

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“How to Tell a True War Story” and “Ambush” are stories that both explore on topics: truth, the real definition of a true war story, and the role of truth. O 'Brien starts off “How to Tell a True War Story” with “This is true.” Starting this story with such a bold sentence not only makes it seem more true, but to some extent, it acts as a comfort statement to the narrator’s own doubts, as if there were unspeakable uncertainties and lies of the narrator. The title of this story also comes into play, with a meta-fictional name “How to Tell a True War Story”, as if it were a guide, a manual, having a true war story tell the readers how to tell a true war story. However ironically, towards the middle of the story, us as

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In The Things They Carried, O’Brien’s story-telling method is an attempt to show that the lines between fiction and reality are often not that far. Even though the names or details may not be fully accurate, this does not change the fact that they are a reality for many. Additionally, he challenges the importance that we place on war and links it to a storytelling aspect because he’s pointing out that not every story has a moral to it. With tragic events, we typically want some sort of meaning behind them, some sort of assurance that the incident was not for nothing. However, this is not always true, as a character “Yeah, well…I don’t see no moral”…

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He tells stories about when he fled to the border of Canada due to his pride, feels guilty for letting his family and friends down, and then comes back. This trend of guilt felt due to decisions that were made based on pride is also shown when Jimmy Cross has too much pride to tell his higher ups that the place in the field isn’t safe for the troop to settle down, so he feels guilty when Kiowa is lost in the muck. The situations that O’Brien and his comrades are put in because of their pride can lead them to do things out of character and lead to a deep sense of guilt later. These themes in The Things They Carried give the readers a better idea of how soldiers made tough choices in Vietnam and how it affected them

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688 Words | 3 Pages

“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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The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.

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There are numerous examples of metafiction in The Things They Carried; many are clear, and some are harder to notice at first glance. In the text, author Tim O’Brien uses a metafictional writing style to vividly illustrate what emotions and thoughts went through the minds of the soldiers fighting in Vietnam, including himself. It is unclear whether or not some of the stories he tells in the text actually happened, but there is no doubt that they are paramount to the underlying objective of O’Brien’s writing style: to use realistic scenarios that may not have actually happened, to make whatever changes necessary to the story to get his point across. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction to obscure the line between truth and fiction by manipulating details that trigger certain emotions to influence the reader. Metafiction allows writers like Tim O’Brien to manipulate what is held to be truth, and fabricate certain details in an attempt to enhance or reinforce the meaning of a story.

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