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The Things They Carried And A Farewell To Arms

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Douglas MacArthur once said, “The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war” (“Douglas MacArthur Quotes”). The wounds and scars that soldiers are left with are not all visible to the naked eye. War can impact the human mind more than most people realize. War changes how a person acts, how they think, and who they are. While someone who has not experienced the nightmares of war might see the physical effects of war as the greatest threat, it is actually the psychological effects of war that leave the deepest scars. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms are novels whose purpose is to inform the reader on the negative effects …show more content…

“The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were… These items weighed about between 12 and 18 pounds… By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds” (O’Brien 2). O’Brien’s restatement of the things the soldiers carried being only “necessities or near-necessities” shows how war breaks soldiers down into the lists of equipment that they carry. More specifically, O’Brien talks about the “steel helmets” and other “items” that “they all carried” to show that the soldiers all become the same person and carry the same things. He does this to prove that war doesn’t care about who or what someone was before. Instead, all individualities of the person are left behind as they are now titled as a soldier and lose their personal identity among their horrific memories of the war. “The catalog of objects carried, the accumulating weight of things, extends in steady, numbing procession. Gradually the repetition of weights and measures acquires meaning. This is what their lives have become, step after step, ounce after ounce” (McCarthy 2). O’Brien uses the “numbing procession” that is felt through his restatement of the “accumulating weight of things” the soldiers carried to share that these things also had an emotional weight. Throughout the novel, O’Brien shows that the many things carried by the soldiers gradually acquire more meaning and eventually redefine their lives as “step after step, ounce after ounce” of doing the same pointless actions over and

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War is one of the most complex yet completely understood subjects to read or write about. Tim O’Brien has captured the true essence of being drafted into a war. “The Things They Carried” is a novel composed of multiple short stories; Each taking the reader through the perspective of the narrator showing his multiple landscapes, situations, and changing feelings from being drafted into the Vietnam War to surviving it. These stories really help one understand the effects of war on someone’s mind as well as body. Tim O’Brien is the main character and protagonist in this novel.

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In The Things They Carried the author, Tim O’Brien, uses rhetorical strategies in order to emphasize the events of war, which then assists the reader into experiencing the burden and overall experiences of the Vietnam War. At the beginning of Chapter One, O’Brien arranges his writing in a way that relates back to the experience of war. By organizing the paragraph into a list, the reader is dragged through the burden of a paragraph with it’s repetition and boring content. This directly correlates with the event of the war, the soldiers are going through the same feeling of burden when they constantly march. Along with war comes new relationships with the soldiers.

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“But from this point on he would comport himself as an officer…”. O'Brien repeats these three phrases to emphasize his point. I think the phrases "they carried" and "the things they carried" are stressed continuously in order to really state the fact that war can be burdensome and grueling. These words are thrown at the reader repeatedly because they hold weight.

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This brings focus specifically to the things the men are carrying, both tangible and intangible, without deemphasizing the narration. O'Brien gives only straight forward descriptions in these sections and the writing is nugatory of any feeling or sentiment whatsoever. On the other hand, when describing the intangible items, the writing is automatically perceived as more in tune with the emotions of the characters in the novel. The author's writing tends to be taking more sentimentality in these segments and adds a great deal of emotional weight for the reader. The soldiers all clearly want to escape the reality of what is going on around them in the war.

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The short story, “The Things They Carried,” written by Tim O’Brien (1990), appears to be an unpretentious narration that list the tangible items carried by the soldiers while fighting in the Vietnam War. Upon further review it becomes clear that the lists of “things” have a much deeper meaning and carry an abundance amount of emotional weight. Not only is their load a physical burden that consist of hefty equipment that is necessary for survival, but they also bear the burden of internal conflict. The internal conflicts identified in the story center around the disturbing afflictions carried by the soldiers revealing that the men long for an escape from their dreadful surroundings, feel responsible for the lives of their fellow soldiers,

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“O'Brien's endeavoring to tell us that albeit they're made up, there's an abundance of truth to their characters. True stories and true characters don't fit orderly into a narrative or into character roles. The best way for O'Brien to communicate his Vietnam experience in “The Things They Carried “is to give us the "story-truth," not the "transpiring-truth" (The Things They Carried Theme of Truth-http://www.shmoop.com/things-they-carried/truth). O’Brien uses story-truth in lieu of transpiring-truth as a way to show the vicissitudes in between authenticity during war time and as a way of making the reader understand the experience

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This is symbolic because I feel O’Brien tries to stress that is the reason a lot of soldiers went. Throughout the first chapter of the book details of physical as well as intangible things the soldiers carried were given. It seems as though all of the things listed tell about what kind of person each soldier was based on what he carried. Such as when he said Henry Dobbins things consisted of food as he

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The author was writing the story “The Things They Carried” expressed so many thoughts and feelings about what the soldiers had faced, they showed their feelings and duties, life or death, and overall fear and dedication. This story shows the theme of the physical and emotional burdens that everyone is going through in the war. By showing his readers what the soldier’s daily thoughts are and how they handle what is going on around them. Tim O’Brien expresses this theme by using characterization, symbolism, and tone continuously. In the story, physical and emotional burdens plagued several characters as they all had baggage weighing them down.

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Characters featured throughout various pieces of American Literature are often positively or negatively affected by their past. These past events can affect the character’s present feelings, ideals, or actions. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, one character is affected significantly by the past events of his life. As both the narrator and protagonist, Tim O’Brien is affected by the former occurrences and memories of when he was a soldier fighting in the Vietnam War. He carries with him the traumatic recollections of the time at war, which has led him to share his experiences with others through storytelling, attempting to effectively communicate the nearly impossible depiction to others: what it was truly like as a soldier in Vietnam.

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When people think about soldiers, what comes to their mind? Often, people think about bravery, discipline, and seriousness. These are positive adjectives for soldiers; however, these adjectives create a set of unattainable expectations for them. As we send these men and women into a war chosen for them by the United States Congress, these expectations bedevil them, and they are often left struggling to cope with the traumatic experiences they encounter. A veteran of the Vietnam War, Tim O’Brien, chose to write about this injustice experienced by himself and other soldiers in his book, The Things They Carried.

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War has a profound and lasting impact on individuals and society. In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, he tells different stories of before, during and after war and how it affects the soldiers, mentally and physically. In these stories Tim O’Brien illustrates these traumas and the long-lasting effects and impact that the war will always have on these men. Even though all the men didn’t survive the ones that did continue to have traumatic flashbacks. War has a lasting impact on individuals and society, affecting not only the physical but the mental and emotional well-being of those involved.

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O’Brien’s intended audience was young people who were not educated about the war and he discussed the themes shame/guilt and mortality/death. The chapter “The Things They Carried” gives an introduction about the men in the group, it also shows shame/guilt. The chapter talks about the equipment each soldier carried and how it affected them. During this chapter it focuses primarily on LT.

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The Things They Carried, a collection of related short stories that appears grounded in O'Brien's own "real" combat experience even as it insists upon war as an endless fiction, ponders the complexities of such connections. This is a way for O’Brien to learn to cope with some of the things he went through in the war. Another reason behind writing The Things They Carried would be the need to tell the truth of war. Ultimately, as O’Brien writes in How To Tell A True War Story: “It wasn’t a war story.

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Tim O'Brien's “The Things They Carry,” tells a story about the lives of young men during war. The narrator tells his story from first person, marking all of his adventures and experiences of his companions. O’Brien crafts his piece through the use of repetition, symbolism, and metaphors to convey the idea of physical and psychological hardships of soldiers during war. Though the literary device of repetition, O'Brien portrays the physical and psychological hardships of a soldier.

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