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Similarities Between O Brien And Brian Turner

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War Books For some people war is a piece of history and for other’s it’s a piece of their lives they’ll never forget. Brian Turner and Tim O’Brien share the same topic, which was war. Both men did fight in different war, which were in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and used literature to write their experiences. Turner used the power of poetry, while O’Brien used his stories. Both author’s did capture the harsh reality of war, yet one was more effective than the other. Brian Turner made his poems’ descriptive but it touched more to his feelings rather than the war, while Tim O’Brien was able to bring his war to life by using characters in his stories In Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried, he talks about his experience through the Vietnam War. …show more content…

O’Brien was able to describe a scene for the readers to imagine. For example, in the chapter How to Tell a True War Story, he said, “What happened was, we crossed a muddy river and marched west into the mountain, and on the third day we took a break along a trail junction.” When he would events places like this, it brought his stories to life and I could imagine it. O’Brien even said, “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.” because he wanted the readers to experience and feel what he had been through during the war. O’Brien and Turner are similar by expressing their feelings in their books. Turner used his poems’ for example, Observation Post #71, describes how he saw and thinks about what he has seen. O’Brien would write paragraphs that he believed he saw. Tim O’Brien was able to create the suspense, guilt and grief people would experience at war. He even described his friends he lost along the way. Their deaths were indescribable, …show more content…

The way each character acted and behaved in the war sort of related to myself and how I think I would be like in a war. For example when a man named Jorgenson panicked when he had seen someone injured during a battle, he didn’t know what to do. Many people can relate, even myself, when Jorgenson had said, “When you got hit, I kept telling myself to move, move, but I couldn’t do it, like I was full of drugs or something.” His reaction during the war and being in shock when so many other things are happening is the result of why so many people can relate to him. Nobody is prepared to take in so much even during a war. I think the more he connected the readers to his characters, it made his story more of a reality. It was if I could put myself in their positions because I was similar to them. When the characters would react crazy or insane like Dave Jensen did in the chapter Enemies, he felt he couldn’t trust anyone, but he had to make things right. He drove himself crazy because he felt he would be attacked from his team and the real enemies. I believe that would probably happen to most people and we can all have a breaking point even O’Brien had his own. Understanding the way the characters felt and behaved helped relate myself and bring the reality of war to life. There were moments that I didn’t want to picture but I had to because I wanted to keep reading, and it was if I was there. The most important piece that

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“On the Rainy River” The book, The Things They Carried, contains many extraordinarily written chapters including the chapter I personally believe to be the best, “On The Rainy River”. In this chapter, Tim O’Brien - who also happens to be the narrator of this book - gets a letter saying that he is being put into the draft and will soon ship off to the Vietnam War. Out of shock and fear, Tim plans to run away to Canada in order to dodge the draft. After hours of driving, he pulled into the Tip Top Lodge - an old fishing resort - to take a short break. Both the vivid imagery and deep internal conflict prevalent in this chapter are the two things that create this exceptionally written section.

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Perry for example was already uncertain of his future and his knee injury already had him on edge. towards the end of the book after burning the corpses of his past comrades he lost all faith, and innocence. So the theme of the book is that war is devastating to person both mentally and

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Although no one would be able to fully understand the agony that is battle unless you were there, the book is very vivid and gives a detailed look into what life was like on the front lines. In today’s world, war is mostly fought at a distance using missiles and bombs, but during World War I, war had to be fought up close, and soldiers had to kill hundreds of men in hand to hand combat, and that really took a toll on their mental state. Many people at the time the book was published did not fully know the consequences of the war, or how brutal combat was since the men returning home were so shell shocked and unable to talk about it. The they were expected to come home and share their glorious war stories, which, were not in fact glorious, and that brought back painful, troublesome memories that they would much rather avoid reliving. They were also expected to return to life as usual, which would have been nearly impossible with their psychological scars.

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All the moments were explain in a specific way that would make you feel the moment and interpret it in a real way. They carried things that a normal human living wouldn’t be able to handle: their friends who have been dead, their own lives; so many responsibilities in their back all time carried them. There’s not time in the war to winning, you just take a big breath and move on. Past is past; people die but those one who are alive need to continue their live normally.

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This chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”, showed us how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were dealing with the war both physically and psychologically. It also shows us how the Tim O'Brien behaved and felt when he was shot, wounded and had a bacteria infection on his butt and how the war changed the way he thought, and viewed the other soldiers around him. This chapter also contain a lot of psychological lens. From the way Tim O’Brien felt when he was shot and separated from his unit to a new unit to when he wanted revenge on Bobby Jorgenson for almost “killing” him.

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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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The author goes into great detail to make the reader fully understand all of the horrible things that happened in Vietnam. Everything is so believable, it’s hard to distinguish what is real and what is not real. For example, in one of the stories Tim tells the story of how he killed a man on a trail. O’Brian goes into great detail about the moments leading up to the death and all of the gruesome details of the body afterwards. He explains to the reader his feelings after what had happened to try and connect with the reader and make them feel the way he had.

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Emotionally the stories within the novel give truth for the reader. O’Brien uses the protagonist, Tim, to deliver the stories, showing the reader how it would feel to be a part of the war. O’Brien shows the reader that when telling a story, the

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By giving the main character of the book his own name, O'Brien makes a clear connection to all of the stories told in the book by explaining them through emotion and vivid detail, though he is caught contradicting himself multiple times throughout the book. O'Brien didn't want to write a war story, as told in an interview, so he decides to use stories in order to outline the war without making the book more of a collection of stories rather than a war book. By doing this, the stories are subjected to fictionalization, nevertheless, the reader is prone to believe that the author is telling the full truth because, there are no obvious reasons would O'Brien have to lie. Though he may be pushing the stories further than they may have actually went, they are able to connect together and form a book that can be read by anyone who is not a fan of war books, while still being enjoyable for people that do enjoy war books. The war to this book is more of an element rather than a main

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The point of the story is to relay to the reader everything they carried and more, but O’Brien uses this to expand on his characters and establish a connection between character and reader. If he had simply written a narrative about the men marching through Vietnam, the reader would not be able to truly understand the emotional weight on their shoulders. The characters would be flat and boring, yet the technique allows for the narrative to maintain a constant flow without disruption to develop

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Fiction puts the him in charge of making the story whatever he wants it to be. O’Brien can pick and choose whether he wants to tell the truth with small stretches to the actual story or the

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That Stories Tell us about War What do you think Tim O’Brien want his reader to understand about war? He wants his readers to feel an emotional connection to the place that he describes. One of the main things that he wants his readers to feel is emotion. Or the feeling that you have been there.

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The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien uses many effective rhetorical strategies throughout. In the chapter On the Rainy River, Tim O’Brien tells the audience a story he has never told anybody. Not even his parents, siblings or wife. He narrates the events and emotions that he experienced after receiving a war draft notice during the summer of 1968. O’Brien is ashamed about how he dealt with the notice and he feels as though he is “too good” to go to war.

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The contrasting reactions of Tim and how others felt indicate that all soldiers have different, extensive, reactions to emotions during war because of the stress. Another example of empathetic soldiers is seen in Larry Gwin’s memoir “An American in Vietnam: ‘Those were the first men I ever killed and I remember each of them very distinctly’”. His job was to attack a settlement complex, but afterward, when they entered, Gwin and his troop discovered they had decimated a civilian village. “It broke my heart and it broke the hearts of the guys I served with. I know after we left that village, none of us could talk and none of us could look back.

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Present throughout the book is the theme of disillusionment. In the school, they’ve been told by their schoolmasters and parents that unless they join the war, they would remain cowards. They see propaganda after propaganda, all alluding towards the glory of battle and warfare. Out on the front, they realize that nothing was further from the truth. Their dreams of being heroes shattered, like when they compare themselves to the soldier on a poster in chapter 7.

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