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Characteristics of the Army
Vietnam war effects on people
Vietnam war negative effects
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Characteristics of the Army
Vietnam war effects on people
Vietnam war negative effects
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
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.
War is one of the most complex yet completely understood subjects to read or write about. Tim O’Brien has captured the true essence of being drafted into a war. “The Things They Carried” is a novel composed of multiple short stories; Each taking the reader through the perspective of the narrator showing his multiple landscapes, situations, and changing feelings from being drafted into the Vietnam War to surviving it. These stories really help one understand the effects of war on someone’s mind as well as body. Tim O’Brien is the main character and protagonist in this novel.
Kody Losey Mrs. Enix Seventh Period A winner or A hero 23 September 2014 A winner or A hero “Medic!!!!!! ,” yelled the Private as the injured man fell to the ground with a dull thud. “He’s too far away!!
Tim O’Brien is a novelist and a retired soldier from the Vietnam War. He wrote a semi-autobiographical novel titled, The Things They Carried, in a format that seemed as if we were in the novel itself. As readers continue with this novel one can envision and have the impression of deaths and all the effects war has on a soldier from the war. O’Brien explores the effect of war on an individual through fictionalized stories he tells in this novel in order to show how humans can change through drastic events that happen to them due to the war. Being in a war affects the way we think and the people we love.
What’s more powerful, the truth or a lie? How are we able to tell the difference? It’s all from a person’s perspective and the way we choose to spin the story. There is no way to identify the real situation unless you were there to witness the event. Throughout the novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien there is a discussion over whether he is using fiction or nonfiction.
“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth” (83). The theme of “happening-truth” versus “story-truth” is a constant opposition Tim O’Brien uses to convey his “true war story” to his audience. Many times in the book The Things They Carried, O’Brien lies to the reader to attempt to give the reader realistic events, so they can relate to the emotions O’Brien felt during the Vietnam war. O’Brien makes it clear in the chapter “Field Trip” that a person who has not been to war cannot comprehend what it was like. He uses a fictional character, Kathleen, to be a stand in for the reader; she is innocent and free from the burden of serving in wartime.
In “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, There are many ideas and desires running through the head of every soldier in Vietnam. It is a challenging war to fight, and also a very hard one to come home from as it was an incredibly unpopular war. Many soldiers faced conflicting desires on the battlefield, but the most interesting example of conflicting desires was Mary Anne Bell. She was the elementary school girlfriend of the young medic Mark Fossie, who was staying at a base in the mountains of Chu Lai. Many soldiers at the base always joked about it being so safe, and with so few officials, that someone could actually fly their girlfriend in and they would both be fine.
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.
In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien expresses to the reader why the men went to the war and continued to fight it. In the first chapter, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien states “It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather they were too frightened to be cowards.” The soldiers went to war not because they were courageous and ready to fight, but because they felt the need to go. They were afraid and coped with their lack of courage by telling stories (to themselves or aloud) and applied humor to the situations they encountered.
Prewriting: Introduction: Often revered as a battle to defend Vietnamese ideologies, the Vietnam War is personified by many as a horrendous, unnecessary war that yielded to many detrimental after-effects, specifically on soldiers. In O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, initially it seems to take the same old generic personification, but after further reading, it is evident that Tim O’Brien’s desire to take on a different representation. Rather than taking on the violent, bloody interpretation of war, O’Brien focuses more on the relationships developed between the soldier and the severities experienced whilst in war. Throughout the novel, the themes of shame and guilt are manifested through the post war stories of the veterans, demonstrating that no soldier is able to escape this perpetual chasm of culpability.
The soldiers of the Vietnam War were mostly innocent young men that were forced to face overwhelming emotional distress like the fear of their own deaths, guilt associated with taking the life of another soldier, and sorrow after witnessing their fellow comrades’ deaths. In The Things They Carried, author, Tim O’Brien, uses fictional stories to display the immense emotional burdens that the soldier Tim and his fellow members of Alpha Company experienced before, during, and after their unforgettably haunting time in Vietnam, and how each handled this “baggage” they carried. O’Brien’s sympathy belongs to the soldiers in the novel, knowing full and well that none of them belonged in the middle of the unjust war. Whether it was by the use of
Literature is a medium of truth-telling. Literature about literature is a medium of truth about truth. Tim O’Brien’s fictionalization of experiences in the Vietnam war, “The Things They Carried,” has the weight of a memoir unburned by facts. The question of fiction’s ability to uncover truth better than events is raised and answered at the same time. The work as a whole affirms this idea.
Soldiers lugging onward in the heat or freezing air with a hundred pounds of gear through tough terrain in gunfire or silence they must keep moving forward to accomplish what they were sent out to do. In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien it is made evident that the men and women who go to war face many struggles and make many sacrifices. Brave military personnel have to overcome personal issues, physical hurdles, and mental barriers while under the pressures of fighting a war. Everyone has personal issues something that is going on in their lives that ponder their minds and can be a distraction to our daily lives. That goes for those in the military as well; personal issues don’t just vanish in the face of war, although that may be
The Things They Carried” is a great short story by Tim O’Brien who displays the remarkable story of soldiers during the Vietnam War. Being away from your family, in an unknown place, giving up your life’s luxuries is difficult to handle mentally and physically. Similarly, in the short story we see how soldiers try to overcome their fear by escaping from the reality of the war time situation around them, to a world that is just an illusion. Throughout the short story we see several men coping through their fear in Vietnam as they had the responsibility of a solider and carried burdens of need and emotions. In order to cope with their fear, the soldiers talked with each other and told each other what they felt since the only thing that they had was time and pain.