ipl-logo

Summary Of Field Trip By Tim O Brien

685 Words3 Pages

In the story “Field Trip” from The Things They Carry, author Tim O’Brien’s portrayal of Kathleen as a “reader proxy” (an ordinary, shallow character that the audience can project themselves onto) and her innocent tone highlight the divide that is seen between veterans and civilians; the lack of mutual understanding results in the widening of the divide between the two, making war an intangible, incomprehensible event that is often dismissed as unimportant. In “Field Trip”, O’Brien takes his ten year old daughter Kathleen to Vietnam as a birthday present. Kathleen seems unexcited about the trip and does not understand the meaning of this journey for her father. Similarly, she is oblivious to what the war was about, and does not understand …show more content…

[because] the interpreter was showing magic tricks” (184).The audience is able to relate to Kathleen — a vast majority have likely not experienced the battlefield, and so are unmoved and confused by O’Brien’s attachment to the land and his dejected emotions. Additionally the contrast between Kathleen’s enjoyment of the magic tricks while her father is reminiscing his gruesome wartime experiences, highlights the general uncaring notion the war garners and the veterans’ experiences being seen as boring and not worth paying attention to. Like Kathleen, the readership is left with only shallow encouragements to offer such as, “I hope you’re having fun” as a way to encapsulate and comprehend the myriad of experiences they do not have …show more content…

She tells him, “Listen, this is stupid” (186). Her inability to understand this symbolic action of respecting Kiowa reflects her innocence as well as her inconsideration due to her obliviousness to the fact that Vietnam and the field are strong triggers for a returning veteran, reminding him of the “vulgarity and horror”. The lack of understanding of the reader and Kathleen stems from the basic incomprehension of the experience of war. For Kathleen and the readers, the land does not hold any poignant memories, it just is a “place [that] sticks” (182). This is because, as O’Brien puts it, “the war was as remote to her [and the audience] as cavemen and dinosaurs” (183). The war is seen as something so remote, something untouchable, that is unable to affect the common man that it is often disregarded. Kathleen knows about her father’s role in the war, yet she seems confused and dismisses him as “weird” and then condemns him for holding onto about “some dumb thing [that] happen[ed] a long time ago”

Show More
Related
398 Words | 2 Pages

In this reading “In the Field” by Tim O’Brien, is about the U.S war in Vietnam. It talks about how soldier was trying to survive in this war and they was looking for a soldier .This story has a lot of irony because eighteen soldiers are looking for one person and they trying to survive themselves. In the Reading a soldier named Kiowa is missing and the eighteen soldiers are trying to look for him. Their mission is difficult because their trying to him in the rain and it’s muddy. In the reading “Man, talk about irony.

Read More
1057 Words | 5 Pages

Cross’ overall experience with Martha and the soldiers? The Vietnam War was one of the most unpredictable and controversial wars that the United States had fought in. Due to the unfamiliar jungle environment, there were many casualties and horrifying experiences. Many people were getting anxious about the war and wanted the soldiers to return.

Read More
1754 Words | 8 Pages

From this quote we can see that Tim Obrien knew that Kathleen was very far from the whole idea of war. He knew that her inocennce wont idea of war. He knew that her inoccents would not let her feel what he feeled about Vietnam but he tryed to by showing the world, offering a small piece of her fathers history. However Kathleen only seen the place as a randon only sees the place as a random field in Vietnam, she also did't like it " This whole war, she said ,why was everybody so mad at everybody else?"

Read More
705 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
641 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout life we experience hardships, and we use these past experiences to help us make future decisions that overall grow as human beings. In Tim O ‘ Brien’s novel “The Things They Carried,” the characters not only carry physical baggage but emotional ones as well. They are forced to feel the effects of war such as guilt, burdens, and other factors that come with being a soldier. Soldiers going into the war often went in with immense pride that they were serving their country however in doing this they didn’t know they would lose their innocence and see the world in a new perspective when they returned. “My hometown was a conservative little spot on the prairie, a place where tradition counted” (O’Brien 38) shows where O’Brien lived in a place where things like the draft were taken very seriously.

Read More
1333 Words | 6 Pages

In war, there is a winning side and a losing side, but both suffer casualties. Afflictions are not always dealt in death and physical pain, but also emotional damage. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he emphasizes war’s capabilities to change people. When Mary Anne, a sweet, innocent, all-American girl, arrives in Vietnam to be with her soldier boyfriend, change is inevitable, and she will eventually lose her naiveté. O’Brien utilizes personification, jarring imagery, hyperbole, and pathos to convey that war shatters all innocence, no matter how hard one may try to avoid the change.

Read More
1292 Words | 6 Pages

Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

Read More
791 Words | 4 Pages

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the author retells the chilling, and oftentimes gruesome, experiences of the Vietnam war. He utilizes many anecdotes and other rhetorical devices in his stories to paint the image of what war is really like to people who have never experienced it. In the short stories “Spin,” “The Man I Killed,” and “ ,” O’Brien gives reader the perfect understanding of the Vietnam by placing them directly into the war itself. In “Spin,” O’Brien expresses the general theme of war being boring and unpredictable, as well as the soldiers being young and unpredictable.

Read More
919 Words | 4 Pages

Human beings often claim to be searching for the truth. The truth often entails finding the right answer, choice, or formula. The search for truth develops a tendency to settle for the easiest choice—a false truth; more often than not, a false truth goes unquestioned in order to remain benighted. Concerning the false truth in The Things They Carried, information—specifically memories, must be sorted into two categories: those stories that are true and those which are simply glorified recreational war stories. It would be a near impossible task due to the extent that the tales mix.

Read More
1251 Words | 6 Pages

Writing Prompt 1 What does it feel like to carry the weight of a nation at the same time as being a teenager? In the novel “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien explores the nature of the Vietnam War and the children who were sent there to fight the war. In the opening chapter of the novel, O’Brien makes it clear of the effect the war has had on his fellow soldiers and himself by the repeated usage of the word “carried”. This term defines the rest of the novel by establishing connections between the soldiers and their lives back home.

Read More
1284 Words | 6 Pages

Tim O’Brien never lies. While we realise at the end of the book that Kiowa, Mitchell Sanders and Rat Kiley are all fictional characters, O’Brien is actually trying to tell us that there is a lot more truth hidden in these imagined characters than we think. This suggests that the experiences he went through were so traumatic, the only way to describe it was through the projection of fictional characters. O’Brien explores the relationship between war experiences and storytelling by blurring the lines between truth and fiction. While storytelling can change and shape a reader’s opinions and perspective, it might also be the closest in helping O’Brien cope with the complexity of war experiences, where the concepts like moral and immorality are being distorted.

Read More
1413 Words | 6 Pages

Hidden somewhere within the blurred lines of fiction and reality, lies a great war story trapped in the mind of a veteran. On a day to day basis, most are not willing to murder someone, but in the Vietnam War, America’s youth population was forced to after being pulled in by the draft. Author Tim O’Brien expertly blends the lines between fiction, reality, and their effects on psychological viewpoints in the series of short stories embedded within his novel, The Things They Carried. He forces the reader to rethink the purpose of storytelling and breaks down not only what it means to be human, but how mortality and experience influence the way we see our world. In general, he attempts to question why we choose to tell the stories in the way

Read More
688 Words | 3 Pages

“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.

Read More
925 Words | 4 Pages

Literary analysis America’s war heroes all have the same stories to tell but different tales. Prescribed with the same coloring page to fill in, and use their methods and colors to bring the image to life. This is the writing style and tactic used by Tim O’Brien in his novel, “The Things They Carried”. Steven Kaplan’s short story criticism, The Undying Certainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, provides the audience with an understanding of O’Brien’s techniques used to share “true war” stories of the Vietnam War. Kaplan explains the multitude of stories shared in each of the individual characters, narration and concepts derived from their personal experiences while serving active combat duty during the Vietnam War,

Read More
1069 Words | 5 Pages

Analysis of “The Demon Lover” Reliving a past experience can often cause someone to have a relapse of those exact emotions of feelings. Elizabeth Bowen often uses her own life experiences throughout her work. Bowen often portrays herself as the main character. Bowen gives her readers a chance to read little bit and pieces of how her life was during the Blitz and World War II.

Read More

More about Summary Of Field Trip By Tim O Brien

Related Topics

Open Document