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Reasoning And Evidence In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Claim 1. O’Brien wants his readers to feel the embarrassment of trying to run from his problems. Reasoning and Evidence O’Brien tries to portray embarrassment through his own testimony. Tim starts the reader off by saying that he has not told this story until now because he thought it “would only cause embarrassment(37)” There is no clearer evidence for this point than this. He comes to tell us the exact feeling he thought we would feel after he wrote this. He also tells us that he still lives with this shame. This foreshadows one of the vibes that he tries to get us to feel while reading the rest of the chapter. Testimony on one of the many ways that embarrassment is displayed in this chapter. Reasoning and Evidence O’Brien gets the …show more content…

Once Tim gets the draft notice we begin to feel the embarrassment When he first got his draft notice he thought that it must be some mistake. He was sure that it could not be him. He had gotten himself a full ride to Harvard and tells the reader that he hated the boy scouts. He was showing so much self-pity to himself. He thought he had it bad and he had not even gotten to the front lines.(39). The overuse of self pity helps to express embarrassment to the …show more content…

He was stuck in the middle of a mental battle. Tim himself says that “I (he) feared the war, … but I (he) also feared exile.(42)” No matter what option he chose there would always be fear attached to it. Tim ended up not crossing the border because he feared the consequences of being chased by the Law and losing everything he had for himself in the United States. (48) It was the fear that led him into this mental battle in the first place and fear that would end up making him pick the war over running to Canada. The combination of the stressful choice that Tim is faced with and the consequences attached to each one helps to develop the theme of fear throughout the chapter. Reasoning and Evidence Through Tim’s gruesome visions the reader is able to feel the fear O'Brien felt in his life. He said that there was just a raw fact of terror. He said that fear was spreading inside of him like weeds. He would see himself dead or be killing another human. He wanted the reader to put themselves in the position of being killed or ending another man's life, which almost everyone fears in some way, to help the reader relate and fear with him while they read. (42) Although these dreams are not used a lot, they clearly express the fear he felt before heading off to the

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His stories are images of his own experiences in the war, as he is the narrator and main character in most of the stories. Some of his points of view are how war is an ambiguous thing and how it changes people. For instance, in “How to tell a true war story” the author reflects on the feelings of being alive after a fight, proposing that war is hell but also many other things. In O’Brien’s words “You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self- your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it.

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Since he opposes the war originally, Tim has to alter his ideologies completely. He is forced to do something he once thought unfathomable, in order to become a soldier, and “take aim at another human being” (175). By doing this just to avoid “patriotic ridicule” (186) Tim goes against everything he believes in solely to ensure people do not judge him. Tim chooses to make tremendous sacrifices of not only his own life but is forced to live with the blood of those he will have to kill. Even if he does survive the war, he will never be the same due to what he sees or does while in Vietnam.

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This is where O’Brien carries so many emotional burdens, Then the chapter “On the Rainy River” shows that O'Brien is frightened and scared of going to war so he runs away. He finds this cabin and helps the old man out there and is given a chance to run away and not come back. Although he is given the chance to run O’Brien decides to head back home and join in the fighting of the war. These two chapters are completely different and the reader can see that O’Brien has lost his innocence from the beginning of the book to the chapter “On the Rainy River”.

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For instance, Mr. Heron betrays the Patriots to the Loyalists, and, as a result, Jerry is taken onto a prison ship. Betsy states, “‘They sunk his body in Long Island Sound in a weighted sack’”(166). Tim figured that they would release Jerry since he is a ten year old innocent boy who has no knowledge of the war. It was the exact opposite of what he thought. They kept a young boy to die then threw him in the ocean and made Jerry’s family suffer.

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There are several instances in which he sheds light on part of himself, and when those are all strung together, it is revealed that Tim O’Brien has post traumatic stress disorder. The Black Hole of Trauma outlines the symptoms of an individual with PTSD quite well, and it can be used to show how Tim is affected by it. It states that “the past interferes with the ability to pay attention to both new and familiar situations”. This applies to O’Brien in the fact that he does not accept new things, he is fixated on the war.

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Sent by Patriots, Dismissed by Protestors In order to better convey an understandable universal truth in their works, writers will distort factual happening truth by creating a fictional story truth. Tim O’Brien uses fictional characters in the novel, The Things They Carried, to convey the pressure American draftees faced when called to join the military in Vietnam. Recruits of the Vietnam War Draft in 1969 were descendants of World War II veterans, subsequently, military service was an expectation. Recruits who dodged the draft would forever be labeled by America as cowards who would, as Vietnam Veteran, Francis T. Logan states, in the South Dakota Vietnam War Memorial Dedication, “live with,” their national embarrassment along with, “their

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When Tim first got the draft letter in the mail he was unsure of what to think and thought “[he] was too good for this war”(P.39), so fleeing to the Rainy River would give him a break to truly listen and connect with his body and make a decision. Although there was a moment in the story when he wanted to go to Canada and be able to see freedom for the first time in a long time it also “separated one life from another. ”(P.45) The separation between his two lives was the breaking points the made him realize what his choice had to be; however, he didn't fully understand what his choice was until he was on the boat with Elroy Berdahl, the owner. Without Elroy having to say anything he realized that going to fight in the war would be the best thing for himself and everyone around him, as a result, that was how he was influenced to go to the war instead of

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