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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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