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Similarities Between American Sniper And The Things They Carried

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The Veracity of War One who is inexperienced and uneducated with war can have many thoughts and opinions about the subject, but only those who have experienced war can understand its true meaning, or lack thereof. In 1990, Tim O’Brien published an appalling, loathsome collection of short stories called The Things They Carried. O’Brien’s experiences in the Vietnam war is what influenced him to write the truth about war, or his version of the truth. O’Brien depicted this by describing his own warped and questionable story; “The Man I Killed.” Chris Kyle, another American author, later wrote in 2012 an enthralling, morbid memoir called American Sniper. Kyle put on display an honored and unique opinion about war by having a flashback of when he …show more content…

Page 127 of The Things They Carried states, “The grenade made a popping noise- not soft but not loud either- not what I’d expected- and there was a puff of dust and smoke- a small white puff- and the young man seemed to jerk upward as if pulled by invisible wires.” (O’Brien) This quotation displays auditory and visual imagery that exhibits the scene where O’Brien kills a young vietnamese man. By using lucid imagery, the reader can easily place themselves in the scene with O’Brien. It is evident that O’Brien is enduring great guilt because of his spontaneous and involuntary action. O’Brien can remember the minor details of how he killed the young man, making it evident to the reader that O’Brien possibly suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. O’Brien also states on page 118, “He had been born, maybe, in 1946 in the village of My Khe… He was not a Communist. He was a citizen and a soldier.” This quotation demonstrates to the reader how O’Brien personified the young vietnamese man. O’Brien humanizes the soldier by giving him an innocent background; one that could be compared to his own life stories. The reader can see how it is apparent that O’Brien knew nothing about the young man, other than his physical features. O’Brien let his guilt and pity

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In the 1990 book “The Things They Carried” By Tim O’Brien gives both the victims and survivors of the Vietnam war a voice. The soldiers, alive and dead, experienced horrific events too terrible to speak of. No one could express their emotions, causing many mental illnesses such as PTSD. How could they express how they felt if they couldn’t speak of the horrors that occurred? Tim O’Brien gave them a voice.

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In If I Die in a Combat Zone, author Tim O’Brien argues that the Vietnam War was unjust by expressing his disapproval of the war through his own moral beliefs, sharing the descriptions of deaths in Vietnam of the innocent citizens, and by describing how much the war impacted himself and others negatively. In the beginning of the book, O’Brien openly stated his beliefs on the war. He believed it was wrongly accepted and unjust, but he battled his own opinions with society’s views anyway (18). Constantly, O’Brien discussed within his own head about the true definition of bravery and courage (147).

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

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Although the soldier he killed was an enemy soldier, instead of vilifying him he was able to humanize the man. O’Brien was able to describe the physical appearance of the soldier and imagine her life before war. The author was able to portray an emotional connection and made the line between friend and enemy almost vanish. This was able to reveal the natural beauty of shared humanity even in the context of war’s horror. O’Brien is able to find the beauty in the midst of this tragic and horrible event.

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Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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The fantasy does not always make the pain go away. In the Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien in the vignette, The Man I Killed, O'Brien describes a Viet Cong soldier whom he has killed, using meticulous physical detail, including descriptions of his wounds. Then O'Brien imagines the life story of this man and imagines that he was a scholar who felt an obligation to defend his village. In the story, The Man I Killed, Tim O'Brien uses diction, repetition, and imagery to to convey his feelings of guilt and desolation, about the man he killed and link it to his overall purpose of writing the book, to inform readers of war is destructive, the soldiers lives have the chance to carry on forever in story form.

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How Does Tim O Brien Use Story Telling In The Things They Carried

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Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are". (O'Brien 38) O’Brien uses his stories to reach his audience. There are generations of people who have no clue what war is really like, whether it is because of our misconceptions based on what media portrays or the fact that there are people who have not served in the military. Some people might know about Vietnam and know the outcome of the war, but they don’t have the experience and real life understanding of how that story ended. They might not be able to fully understand the feelings of a soldier.

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The Things They Carried Morally Ambiguous Characters

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O’Brien begins thinking about how the soldier’s life must have been, simply by going off of his description. O’Brien says that this soldier loved math but was bullied for being smart and having a miniscule body. O’Brien also says that this soldier was told many stories about brave warriors who served their country just like us, but the soldier was scared, and he prayed that he wouldn’t become old enough to fight. This moment of O’Brien seeing life from the enemy’s shoes gives the reader sympathy for the vietcong soldier. O’Brien explaining this now gives a new way to connect to our “enemy” and truly questions if anyone in war is purely evil or purely

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I Die In Combat, Box Me Up And Ship Me Home, By Tim O Brien

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O’Brien becomes psychologically conflicted about the meaning and morality of the war. Erik, a fellow solider, intellectually challenges O’Brien to question what their roles are in war. Together they show a psychological resistance to the military throughout the

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Important Quotes From The Things They Carried

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In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien we learn about O’Brien and his soldiers during the Vietnamese war. The Vietnamese war was a deadly and very costly war between the North Vietnam and their communist allies versus the Southern Vietnam and the United states. Throughout the novel Tim O’Brien narrates many stories about the war. Stories about traumatic incidents, pleasant occasions, sorrowful events, and even peculiar event. Personal accounts about himself and also tells about experiences his fellow soldiers faced.

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Imagery In The Things They Carried

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In the chapter when he describes the man he kills, he talks about the state of the dead body by saying, “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole…the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him” (O’Brien Chapter 11). This brutal and horrifying imagery displays an irrefutable element of truth to O’Brien’s writing. Not only does this imagery highlight the truth to his writing, but it also sheds light on the brutal truth about the war in Vietnam. By using imagery as such a strong rhetorical device in his writing, he gives the average person a taste of just how barbaric and cruel Vietnam felt for the people who experience the war first hand on either side of the fighting. Tim O’Brien gives a very detailed and intense description of his time fighting in Vietnam during their war with America.

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Plato once said, “ Only the dead have seen the end of the war”. Tim O’Brien is the protagonist of the novel The Things They Carry. He describes the events that occurred in the middle of his Vietnam experience. The book was written to share his memories and O'Brien's own stories. In those stories we discover characters like Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, Kiowa,Dave Jensen and many others whom he served with in the war.

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Truth In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

919 Words | 4 Pages

This is the man O’Brien killed, or felt he killed. O’Brien implies that he never actually killed this man, but he still felt he was responsible for this man’s death. Being a young, fearful soldier, Tim O’Brien was too afraid to look at the faces and bodies that surrounded him and take responsibility for their deaths, which resulted in a future O’Brien writing, “And now, twenty years later, I’m left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief” (172). Through his stories, O’Brien is able to use his emotions and remorse to recreate his young self as a man who looked at these lifeless bodies and felt responsible for their fates. O’Brien can also utilize his emotions to fabricate a story that included his true thoughts and feelings when encountering death in Vietnam.

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1504 Words | 7 Pages

Even after all these years, O’Brien is still unable to get the images of Vietnam out of him head, specifically of the man he killed. In the novel, he repeats the description of the man numerous times, almost to the point of excess, saying,“he was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole” (124).

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Guilt In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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In The Things They Carried, As O'Brien was in the field, he killed a young Vietnamese soldier with a Grenade. The soldier was posing no threat to him but through the grenade in panic, not even knowing it. Even though he was a Vietnamese soldier. He felt guilt for killing him. In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien writes, “‘Stop staring at him”, says Kiowa.

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688 Words | 3 Pages

He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.

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1902 Words | 8 Pages

"When The Past Is In The Present" In the autobiographical story American Sniper written by Chris Kyle, he accurately demonstrates how traumatic events from war can greatly affect military personnel and how they struggle to keep their friendships and relationships alive. The novel represents how soldiers of war and traumatizing events and atmospheres, such as the Middle East can be greatly affected. Countless times Chris Kyle was crippled by the brutal and gruesome events during his deployment to the Middle east. He showed signs of anger, frustration, and a lack of communication as a result of the atmosphere.

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