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Symbols In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, he tells the story through narrative perspective, character development, setting, and symbolic elements. By using both first-person and third-person narratives, O'Brien provides multiple sides of the Vietnam War experience. Each story has a protagonist facing a different conflict, contributing to a number of individual struggles. The settings serve by shaping the individual stories and the experiences of the characters. Recurring characters, places, and objects emerge as symbols, having many different meanings. Through these individual stories, he creates one unified story. With all of these, he is telling the impact of the Vietnam War. The significance of Tim O’Brien telling the story of The Things …show more content…

These recurring characters, places, and objects all help to serve us to understand what the soldiers are going through. The first symbol, Ted Lavender, symbolizes morality, loss, and the psychological toll of war. His character and death are brought up in multiple chapters such as “The Things They Carried”, “Love”, “Night Life”, and “The Lives of the Dead” where it is shown the emotional lasting effect that his death has had on the soldiers. In the story “The Things They Carried” shows that death affects the soldiers, “He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence, Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war.” This is showing how he takes the blame for it and is going to have to have that regret for the rest of his life. The next symbol is the setting of the Vietnam War. This represents the soldier's experiences and fears, it also symbolizes a hostile and unfamiliar environment. This is where all of the soldiers' hardships are happening at. The last symbol is the pebble carried by Lieutenant Jimmy Cross this symbolizes the love that he has for Martha. In the story “The Things They Carried” his pebble represents his love for Martha and good luck due to her picking out the pebble for him and sending it to him. Later in the chapter “Love” he thinks about getting rid of the pebble when he was burning the pictures of Martha after Lavender’s death but he is not able to get rid of it just like his love for Martha. The pebble shows his attachment to Martha and how he always has it with him and isn’t able to get rid of it. These recurring characters, places, and objects all help to serve us to understand what the soldiers are going through throughout the

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In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, ambiguity is used to enforce the character of the story. O’Brien communicates the struggle of being on the battlefield, however it wasn’t a choice but a matter of abstract selection in which he couldn’t deny. O’Brien uses series of fear, the savage of the war on the soldiers and how the over certain fear. Repetition of the emphasize the ambiguity of dead. O’Brien fears going to war, he was about to risk his life.

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Things They Carried is a classical American literature written by Tim O'Brien. Tim O'Brien survived the Vietnam War combat only to become a writer. The novel talks about activities of soldiers in a combat mission in Vietnam. The narrator of the story describes things soldiers normally carry to war-both tangible and intangible. The narrator also takes in to consideration the things the soldiers carry to create detailed composites of the characters making them seem real to readers.

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543 Words | 3 Pages

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien is a fictional account of the Vietnam war that seeks to reveal a truth about storytelling. He shows this through several examples, most notably in "Speaking of Courage", where he describes a veteran who can't fit in and drives around the lake, "The man I killed", where the narrator, Tim kills a Vietcong soldier, and "In the Field", which is the opposite of that as it is more direct and isn't as fictionalized. He shows the audience what really happens with "Notes", and "Good Form". Using this book, Tim O'Brien seeks to reveal the truth on how using fiction in narratives can show a deeper truth than just the happening truth.

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833 Words | 4 Pages

Both a novel and a collection of interrelated short stories, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is a book that emerges from a complex variety of literary standards. O'Brien presents to his readers both a war journal and a writer's autobiography, and complicates this presentation by creating a fictional protagonist who shares his name. To fully comprehend and appreciate the novel, particularly the passages that gloss the nature of writing and storytelling, it is important to remember that the work is fictional rather than a conventional non-fiction, historical account. Protagonist "Tim O'Brien" is a middle-aged writer and Vietnam War veteran. The primary action of the novel is "O'Brien's" remembering the past and working and reworking the

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206 Words | 1 Pages

Symbols of War Many books have hidden meanings and symbols that represent something deeper that the reader must understand to understand the book completely. In The Things They Carried , by Tim O’Brien, Symbols were used throughout the book that represented things connected to O'Brien's life or life in the war. Surroundings, People, or objects can all be symbolic to a person’s life. O’Brien uses symbols as a way to get his story of war across to the reader in a creative way.

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2466 Words | 10 Pages

Coping strategies are crucial to the success of the Vietnam War troops. In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien conveys the experiences of War World Two soldiers, and the way soldiers cope through shifts of tone, setting, and character development. The Things They Carried, is multiple short stories put into one book that follows a group of soldiers told from the perspective of the narrator, who is also a character in the book during the time of War World One. The book is structured to reveal what the soldiers carry not just physically but also mentally.

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He depicts the struggle that war veterans go through since not every soldier can forget the death and move on. Some carry ghosts around, while others live their

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1213 Words | 5 Pages

Tim O’Brien’s "The Things They Carried" is a short story that explores the experiences of soldiers during the Vietnam War. The story depicts the physical and emotional weight that soldiers carry with them during the war, highlighting the challenges that soldiers face both on and off the battlefield. Through the items that the soldiers carry with them, the story reveals the emotional and physical burdens of war and the masking of emotions because of masculine identity. The story begins with a list of items that the soldiers carry with them, ranging from physical items such as guns and ammunition to intangible items such as fear and guilt.

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Synthesis Essay In the Vietnam war, there were many soldiers at war with each other, and most soldiers were not prepared for the fight. In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien was in the Vietnam war when he was young. The book was not in order but he still talks about his experiences while in the war. His purpose for writing this novel was because he wanted younger audience to know what happened in the war and what the soldiers experienced.

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1580 Words | 7 Pages

Discussing the physical items the soldiers carry along with them, readers are able to determine

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The use of symbolism to develop the theme? The Things They Carried is a fictional book, but is also autobiographical hence the setting is existent. Tim with Timmy thus show us his how he carrying the burden of the Vietnam War as part of our collective past, this is it from the author 's point of view he is the character Tim O Brien and he is telling the story. The book represents emotions by symbolises an imaginary side of war in Vietnam which symbolises an important theme”In a true war story, if there 's a moral at all, it 's like the thread that makes the cloth” comparing the cloth to the thread, this vocabulary allows the reader to realize a thread is an object, it cannot produce a cloth in the same way war is an object to complete it

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1178 Words | 5 Pages

A lot happens in Tim O 'Brien short story "The Things They Carried", at first, the reader speculates what the short story is about and why it is called "The Things They Carried". The narrator Tim O 'Brien tells and describes all the things that the men have to carry while "in-country" during the Vietnam War in the1960 's. The text 's artistic value comes from its plot, characters, conflict, and style. In the plot of the story the protagonist, Tim O 'Brien starts by describing circumstances that happened while he was in Vietnam. In the beginning of "The Things They Carried" we are introduced to each character by the things they carry.

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1011 Words | 5 Pages

Many soldiers carry mementos from  both their home and past but, it can be inferred that none of the men are completely engulfed in the memories they bring, unlike their lieutenant. These examples of symbolism help accentuate the primary

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450 Words | 2 Pages

Them were just three of the symbols readers respected from the short story ‘’ The Drummer Boy of Shiloh.’’ People respected many more but that was three of my favorites, people liked the use of symbols because it added detail and helped you picture the story a lot

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697 Words | 3 Pages

The novel is a collection of interconnected stories that explore the experiences of the soldiers in the war, and the stories are often reflective of their experiences and emotions. Through these stories, O’Brien is able to explore the psychological and physical impacts of war, as well as the importance of memory and storytelling in preserving the experiences of those affected by war. The narrative of The Things They Carried begins with the chapter “The Things They Carried,” which describes the physical objects the soldiers carried with them in the war. The items range from basic necessities such as food and water, to personal items such as photographs and letters from home. These items reflect the hopes and dreams of the soldiers, but also the fear and anxiety that comes with being in a war zone.

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