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Minor Characters In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Minor characters can add a significant meaning to the plot of a story. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien includes a few minor character to help readers understand his purpose of writing. These minor characters are Mary Anne Bell, Kathleen, and Linda.

Mary Anne Bell is a character that demonstrates the loss of innocence. She was first described as a feminine girl. She had a bubbly personality, friendly atmosphere, and happy smile. The soldiers enjoyed Bell’s presence because it was nice to see a pretty girl after a hard day of work. Mark Fossie brought Bell over to Vietnam primarily for a source of comfort. Fossie exposed Bell to Vietnam, and she learned to love it. After her arrival, Bell started to eagerly follow the soldiers on missions. She became excited to take part in ambushes …show more content…

O'Brien introduced Linda to readers as the girl he loved. Linda died at the age of nine due to a brain tumor. Linda symbolizes remembering loved ones through the connection of love and death. She reveals O’Brien’s inner feelings along with his method to cope with death. After Linda’s death, O’Brien starts to go to bed early to dream about her. In O’Brien’s dreams, Linda is alive and well. He imagines both of them talking and ice skating together. O’Brien could not save his friends physically, so he is keeps them alive in his heart. This is a way O’Brien uses to convince himself that his friends are not really dead. His heart refuses to accept the fact that Linda is gone. O’Brien includes Linda’s death as a comparison to the death of the soldiers that he saw. He implies that death affects veterans the same way Linda’s death affected him. Furthermore, O’Brien reveals that he copes with his troubles by writing novels. Through stories, O’Brien was able lessen his guilt and keep his friends alive. The purpose of this chapter was for readers to empathize with veterans and show more

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A Literary Analysis Of Tim O 'Brien's The Things They Carried'

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Literary Analysis on Short Stories In the short story of Tim O'brien's The Things They Carried uses symbolism to suggest that items that the soldiers Kiowa, Lavender and Cross carried represent their values and where they come from. O'brien successfully shows in depth what each character mentioned in the short story represents in relation to the narrator by mentioning the items and memories that each individual carried.

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In Tim O’Brien’s “The Lives of the Dead”, no one can die; everyone can live on in stories. This short story is about how to keep people alive through stories. In the war Tim has to cope with an abundance of death; this reminds him of Linda, his first love’s death. The guys in war with Tim would pretend the people never died telling jokes about the people who have died both the dead north Vietnamese and their fallen comrades.

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The Things They Carried By Tim Obrien Characters

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In the book "The things thy Carried" written by Tim Obrien we can see a story about solders at Vietnam War. The connections i will be talking about are "Woman in war" and "The loss of innicence". Tim Obrien shows us those connections through chapters as "Sweet heart of the song tra bong", "The Things they carries", "Love" and "Field trip". Usually i would think that a woman in war is always used as a passive character, however Tim Obrien changes the stereotipical view on the role off Woman in war and showed us how the troma of war can change your prespective to anything. Through this book i can learn that as soon as you lose your innacence you can not get it back.

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The Paradox Of War In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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As she becomes engaged in the war Mary Anne evolves to embrace the savage beauty of the land and is lured by the mysteriousness of war. Mary Anne’s presence represents a semblance of normalcy and beauty, contrasting with the harsh realities and horror of combat. This beauty lies in her determination to follow her heart despite the dangers surrounding her. Her interest with Vietnamese culture and integration into their way of life reveals both the allure and the terrifying consequences of war. The beauty lies in her curiosity and willingness to embrace new experiences, even in the midst of a war zone.

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Minor Characters In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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“The Things They Carried” is a short story created by Tim O’Brien. O’Brien tells, from the third person’s point of view, about soldiers and the items they carried during a war. He describes the weight of each object and gives clues or reason to why that soldier may tote them. One of the minor characters he introduces is a man named Henry Dobbins. In the text, O’Brien points out twice that Henry was a big man and show how it influenced few of the items he carried.

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Mary Anne Bell Quotes

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It is hard to tell what is true and not true in a novel, especially when the author says, “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn't, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness” (68). The character Mary Anne Bell was too crazy for this novel though. The most unrealistic characters in The Things They Carried is Mary Anne Bell because she went to the war as a civilian not a soldier, embodies the theme loss of innocence, and there are other character that feel the same loss. There are many events that take place that makes Mary Anne an implausible character. The whole reason that she comes to Vietnam is that she is visiting her boyfriend, and not even the other soldiers believe Rat

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Mary Anne is this cute girl that comes to this war zone in Vietnam. By coming to Vietnam she did not know the dangers that were hidden in the jungle. Before she felt it was right to go and help with what she can, but after she felt that she had to do more and was losing herself along the way. “She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill” (O’Brien 110).

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Innocence In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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A 9-year-old girl named Linda is drafted to fight in a war in Vietnam. She is trained for a few weeks, then flown away. The young girl is scared and confused; however, Linda must hide her feelings in order to be respected. After a few days at war, she is tragically killed in action. In truth, an experience like this is enough to frighten even a 17-year-old girl or young man.

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After she died that had a huge effect on Obrien and he had a hard time getting over her death because he could not find a coping method. Linda’s role was so important because it encouraged Obrien to find a coping method for the empty hole he had in his heart that he was feeling .Linda forces Obrien to use his writing to cope with her death, by telling stories with the memories he had with her, keeping her name

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Mary Anne Bell Character Analysis

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However, war started to change her emotions, appearance and the way she thought and is exemplified when O’Brien describes: “‘It took a few seconds,’ Rat said, ‘to appreciate the full change. In part it was her eyes: utterly flat and indifferent. There was no emotion in her stare, no sense of the person behind it. But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry. At the girl’s throat was a necklace of human tongues,’”

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Death In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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He would make “up elaborate stories to bring Linda alive in [his] sleep”(O’Brien 230). O’Brien was only young when Linda died, and

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Evelyn Scott introduces the death motif by bringing in two different death scenarios: Winnie, who wishes for death, which is in direct contrast to thoughts of completing suicide in the case of Alice. Scott uses these visions of death for the female to imagine an escape from a life of oppression. Alice believes that death will bring amelioration from her darkness and Winnie, in her own right, uses her suppressed sexuality to commit an unspoken form of suicide. She knows she will die during the birth of her child and that Laurence is oblivious to the dark notion of her demise, "Laurence could not believe in death. He did not know it.

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Examples Of If I Die In A Combat Zone

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O’Brien did not like the other soldiers he fought with because they did not care about the Vietnam people. O’Brien claims in the book, “I hated the trainees, even more than the captors. But I hated them all. Passionate, sad, desperate hate” (O’Brien 33). Most trannies did not take the war seriously, but had clicks of friends that O’Brien did not take part in.

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O’Connor also mentions in the story a passing of a graveyard, also hinting toward death. In Short Stories for Students, Kathleen Wilson states, “In the first paragraph of the story, O’Connor introduces the Misfit, the murderer who eventually kills the family. Similarly, as the family prepares to embark on their vacation, the Grandmother plans her outfit with an eye toward tragedy. Dressed in a polka-dot dress trimmed with organdy and decorated by a spray of violets, ‘anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady’” (Wilson 103).

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Lives Of The Dead Literary Analysis

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Obrien keeps the deceased characters Linda, Kiowa, Ted Lavender, Curt and Timmy alive, through his memories, dreams and stories. In Tim O’Brien’s “Lives of the Dead,” the loss of innocence and the power of literacy are both prevalent themes. Symbols are often used in a story to mean more than its literary meaning; Linda’s red cap, in “Lives of the Dead,” is a symbol of innocence’s. Linda’s innocence affected neither her illness nor death. Linda was O’Brien’s childhood girlfriend; when she first found out she was sick and had cancer, she began to wear a red cap, every day.

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