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Summary Of Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy Boy By Tim O Brien

814 Words4 Pages

All one can do is learn how to control fear and utilize it. “Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy Boy,” by Tim O’ Brien is a short story that focuses on the view of Private First Class Paul Berlin, a newcomer to the war, as he and his platoon cautiously make their way to the sea. Through the author’s repetition and wording, the readers are given the effects of war, the attributes of fear and a lasting impression about fear. Through O’Brien’s repetition and use of similes, he delivers the effects of war to the readers. Making their way to the sea, the platoon acted a particular way to avoid being seen by the enemy, “slowly in the dark, single file, not talking, like sheep in a dream they passed through” (O’Brien 262.) War makes one heedful of death. O’Brien’s simile shows the readers that war makes us more cautious of our surroundings. Moving …show more content…

Desperately wanting to get away from the thought of war, Berlin recalls back to his youth, “with his eyes pinched shut, he pretended. He was a boy again, he was not a solider” (262.) Fear of death and war makes one desperately want to escape the reality they are in to a time of naivety and innocence. Paul is able to vividly reminisce back to his childhood because of fear. As Paul came closer to the sea, he thought of his life after the war, “he would begin to make friends and when the war was over, he would have war buddies and he would write to them” (265.) Fear enables Paul to think of the future. Fear can give hope and bring one home. Recalling back to his training before the war, Berlin makes a realization “they hadn’t given any lessons in courage” (266.) That is to say, nothing can prepare one for fear. O’Brien shows the reader fear is inevitable. Across the story, O’Brien connects our relationship to fear using war and shows one can never be prepared for fear and it is able to drive us to do many

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In Tim Obrien’s text, Where have You Gone, Charming Billy?, the author invokes the theme of relative fear, what might be frightening for some may not be so for others. Private First Class Paul Berlin was new and inexperienced, being in an actual war is scary in itself. Even with training and practice you can never tell what will happen in an actual field of battle. The story shows how scary the war was. Paul Berlin experienced his fears throughout the entire story.

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A story that tells only of death, sorrow, and the bitter truth about World War One, Erich Remarque’s book, All Quiet On The Western Front, is simply a story of a generation of men who were lost to war. Told through the eyes of a 19 year old boy named Paul Bäumer, as he shows what World War One was, in all of its horrific glory. This ‘glory’ so to speak was a gruesome, traumatizing experience for many of the soldiers that fought in World War One, this experience engraved in their memory, that would continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives. In the epigraph in All Quiet On The Western Front, it tells that “ even though [the soldiers] may have escaped shells, [they] were destroyed by the war”. It is evident to say that even though some soldiers escaped death from the war, they all will be scared from the experiences they had.

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After that, the squad goes to an observation post where many of the chapters are set, and where Paul Berlin takes watch in order to sort out his thoughts of the past, present, and future. In between the first chapter and the last is Paul telling the story of what could have happened if they had kept going, flashbacks of what he is willing to admit to himself at a given time, and himself in the observation post reflecting on the rest of his thoughts. Throughout the book O'Brien uses many allusions, similarities between flashbacks and his 'future', and Paul’s fear to illustrate that Paul creates a 'dream world' to conquer his fear and to face the decision every soldier faces: to stay or desert. First, O’Brien has Paul allude to many well-known fairy tales because Paul creates a story in his mind to fabricate a potential future. For example, an allusion to Alice in Wonderland is made when Paul, the squad, a refugee, and the refugee’s aunts fall down a hole.

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After the traumatic experiences he suffered through, Paul made mental growth in the human aspect. He figured out that “there are still human faces” even in his enemies. Further in this realization he sympathizes with the rest of the wounded soldiers stuck in similar hospitals all over the enemy lines. This identification attaches Paul to the enemy, positively affecting his mental condition. He recognizes that he is not as drastically different as he thought which ultimately changes his outlook on the war.

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The Meaning of A True War Story Some stories give us insight into other people’s lives and some give us in site to other people’s lives. When people read stories they show them something they have never seen before. Tim O’Brien writes in one of his stories of how war destroys morality. He wrote the story “Where Having You Gone Charming Billy?” showing an example of how stories show true emotion.

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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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In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the author skillfully presents a paradox about war and how it is both horrible and beautiful. Through O’Brien’s vivid storytelling and sorrowful anecdotes, he is able to demonstrate various instances which show both the horrible and beautiful nature of war. Within the vulnerability of the soldiers and the resilience found in the darkest of circumstances, O’brien is able to show the uproarious emotional landscape of war with a paradox that serves as the backbone of the narrative. In the first instance, O’Brien explores the beauty in horror within the chapter “Love.”

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This is how O’Brien puts it, “Private First Class Paul Berlin lay back and turned his head so that he could lick at the dew with his eyes closed, another trick to forget the war. He might have slept. "I wasn't afraid," he was screaming or dreaming, facing his father's stern eyes. "I wasn't afraid," he was saying” (O’Brien 590). Now at the end of the story, O’Brien uses foreshadowing again to show Paul is thinking about another reality where he’s no longer dealing with war.

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Paul Berlin felt fear everywhere he went and anywhere he was on his first day in Vietnam. In The Things They Carried soldiers carried fear also “They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.”

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War carries important morals that heighten the perspective of men and women on their nation, but it also entails many acts and experiences that leave lasting effects on their emotional and physical state. Throughout the following texts, Paul Baumer, the dead soldiers, and Kiowa’s comrades all sustain losses that compel them to persevere and fight harder. All Quiet on the Western Front, Poetry of the Lost Generation, and an excerpt from In the Field all connect to the recurring theme, horrors of war, that soldiers face everyday on the front line through the continuous battle. War involves gruesome battles, many of which lead to death, but these events forever affect the soldier’s mind and body. In All Quiet on the Western Front, men experience horrific sights, or horrors of war, through the depiction of the terrain, death, and the

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Moreover, commonly, soldiers are exhilarated to finally go home after long periods of time at the front, and the men dread when they have to return to battle. However, in Paul’s case, he desires to return to the front, rather than staying in his home town and seeing his mother in pain, he yearns to feel numb again. Therefore, Paul is in “agony” because before going on leave, he was hopeless and had no will to live, thus making him a better soldier. Although, after visiting his mother and sister, he has rediscovered a reason to survive, making it harder to go back. Moreover, the word, “comfortless,” illustrates how Paul feels isolated even at home, he feels little comfort where he grew up.

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Paul learns that war obtains the capability to demolish society. War destroys so many innocent people’s lives, whether it kills innocent human beings or shatters the innocence of those who fight in

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“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.

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Tim O’Brien’s uncommon ending sentence that have caught many people by surprise in the story, “Where have you gone, Charming Billy?” which was wrote as a historical fiction that revolves around the Vietnamese war. It leads you to O’Brien’s perspective on why war is bad. The story also shows how things are not okay, even after the war. O’Brien shows the realities of war through repetition of thoughts about fear, how soldiers deal with it, and the effect it has on their actions.

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