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

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War is an unfortunate consequence of human ignorance and unimaginable to the majority of people. However, in The Things They Carried through detailed storytelling, Tim O’Brien describes the emotions, fear, guilt, and intensity of war to make a point to readers about the senselessness of war. By crafting stories about the guilt involved in death, O’Brien illustrates how the death and insurmountable trauma caused by war is too strong to justify it. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses Mary Anne and Tim’s respective transformations, and the bottling up of emotions experienced by Norman Bowker and Rat Kiley to demonstrate the dangerous desensitization and mental harm that war causes, and thus war’s senselessness. Through Mary Anne’s departure …show more content…

Regarding his pre-war beliefs about Vietnam, Tim states, “I was drafted to fight a war I hated. I was… politically naive, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (O’Brien 38). Tim is simply an average person who does not agree with the ideology and cause of the Vietnam War. However, later in the novel while reflecting on the man he killed, Tim says, “I’d come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person… but after seven months in the bush… I was capable of evil” (O’Brien 191). Tim recognizes that his personality and behavior has completely changed as a result of the war. In an interview at Arlington Central Library, Tim O’Brien recounts, “We as soldiers on one side of a thing view the enemy somehow less than wholly human” (“Tim O’Brien on ‘The Things They Carried’”). This establishes how the emotions and practices in Vietnam caused the soldiers to become desensitized to the lives of the Vietcong, and regard them as enemies, not humans. O’Brien details, “Story is a way of gathering together all that terror and all those long nights lying in the dark waiting to die or to kill one or the other” (“Tim O’Brien on ‘The Things They Carried’”). The fear and feeling of impending doom takes an extreme mental toll on the soldiers, causing them to become desensitized to outsiders and simply focus on survival. Regarding the man he killed, Tim reflects, “It was entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy… There were no thoughts about killing” (O’Brien 127). Tim admits that killing the Vietnamese boy was a reaction to the fear and general attitude of war that envelops him in the fields, and that he has no thoughts about killing. Between the chapters “On the Rainy River” and “The Man I Killed”, the drastic

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This quote from the short story illustrates how Tim felt about leaving for the war. He knew that it was against his beliefs for him to leave. He eventually left for the war, still not believing in what he was fighting for which resulted in Tim losing sight of who he was. He allowed the pressures of society to influence him and morph his character into one resemblant of the popular belief of the time. In the story of The Book Thief, Hans Hubermann experiences a similar situation to Tim.

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I went to the war.” (last paragraph 58) This helps us understand that going to war was not an accomplishment for Tim. He regretted not running away and hated that he went.

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