ipl-logo

The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

446 Words2 Pages

On November 1, 1955, the Vietnam war began. The war was between North Vietnam and South Vietnam along with the United States to stop the spread of communism. Tim O’Brien walked alongside the South China Sea during his time in Vietnam. He and his soldiers called it Pinkville because of the color it was on the map which represented a misleading area. O’Brien published his novel The Things They Carried on war stories to show how storytelling can be believable although his novel is fiction. In Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried, love, shame and enemies plays a vital role. Love plays in imperative role because the heartache can add on extra to the soldiers. The hurt the men carry can be a distraction to them. Tim O’Brien expresses how Lieutenant …show more content…

O’Brien did not want to shame his family by ignoring the draft to the Vietnam war he received. He confirms how he “feared ridicule and censure” to explain how his hometown would disapprove him fleeing to Canada instead going to the war (O’Brien 42). Shame motivated him to go to the war because he do not want to seem cowardly or shameful. Although love and shame affect the men , enemies does as well. There are many reasons for the men to feel that everyone is an enemy, it’s a war. Tim O’Brien states that there “enemies everywhere” to describe the war (O’Brien 60). Anyone who have weapons is an enemy. They can seek revenge at any given moment. President Richard Nixon established a policy called Vietnamization to get the United States out of the war and build bigger force for South Vietnam. On April 30, 1975, South Vietnam collapsed. The war affected the soldiers mentally in a tremendously way. The Vietnam War affected the men mentally and physically in a tremendously way. They witnessed many deaths and many are traumatized from them. Soldiers had to try to maintain their sanity when the returned home. All of the memories they carried home from the war stressed them.Soldiers were also injured at the war. Their legs and arms were blown leaving them in wheelchair or with one hand to live with for the rest of their life. Love, shame, and enemies are important themes in Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They

Show More
Related
1713 Words | 7 Pages

Inside The Minds of Vietnam Tim O'Brien was drafted to Vietnam when he was only 18 years old, taken from his normal everyday college life and sent to a world no American had ever seen. Where in a place so deadly you're never sure when or how you’ll die. Tim O'Brien survived Vietnam, but at home he’s still battling what he thought he had left overseas. The memories still haunt him and many other men who made it home. His novel, The Things They Carried, describes Vietnam and all the things he encountered including the people he lost.

Read More
705 Words | 3 Pages

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.”

Read More
734 Words | 3 Pages

In the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, a story is told to exemplify how war can change a person. It expresses the humane side of war, the struggle to overcome grief and how difficult it is to deal with death. The book releases strong emotions and allows the reader to really connect with the characters involved. Tim O’Brien enables the audience to feel the emotions emerging from the book by writing it as fiction. With O'Brien's decision to write his novel as fiction allows him to more accurately convey emotion behind each story he has to tell.

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
1008 Words | 5 Pages

Seeing people all around you getting Injured and Killed all the time when you are Thousands of miles away from home will charge you. War changes everything about you, the way you talk, the way you see things, the way you look at life, and many other things. In the book, The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien, the people and soldiers in Vietnam experience some kind of change. The Book is about the Vietnam War, it talks about physical and emotional baggage that the soldiers carried, O’Brien talks about the friends he lost in the war and the friends that survived but had to deal with the stress of the war. He talks about the soldiers and how they changed because of the war.

Read More
1234 Words | 5 Pages

In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, many of the characters’ thoughts stay centered around love. The Things They Carried is a collection of short stories based upon Tim O’Brien’s time in the Vietnam War. Throughout his writing, Tim explains the ups and downs of war, the feelings he and the other men felt, and the situations they found themselves in. He gives a very in depth look specifically on the idea of love during a time of war. The Things They Carried demonstrates the power love has over the thoughts and actions of the people in its stories.

Read More
747 Words | 3 Pages

For many soldiers returning home from war, the truth about what happened can be a hard and confusing thing. The book The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, and published in 1990, describes his time in the war. O’Brien struggles the whole time with differentiating his emotional memories with events that actually happened, and tries to impress upon the reader what it was actually like to be over in Vietnam. O’brien believes that war stories do not always accurately portray what war was like, and that is why story-truth can be truer than the happening-truth.

Read More
722 Words | 3 Pages

Over two million people lost their life to the Vietnam War. Two million, wives,husbands, mothers, fathers, children, and siblings gone; and what do we have to show for it. The Novel, “The Things They Carried” is written by, Tim O’Brien. The book takes place in the vietnam war and shares some stories of the brutal and hard times the narrator and his platoon went through, and the even harder battles they will face after they’re home “safe”. I have picked out two characters that stood out because they relate to our topics, “Families Bring Comfort and Conflict”, and “Defining Moments and Finding My Way.”

Read More
587 Words | 3 Pages

In Tim O’brien’s war story, The Things They Carried, the narrator describes the life of American soldiers and provides evidence of how the war has impacted their lives. In the 1960’s, young American men were sent to fight in the war thousands of miles away from their homes. At this time, most men had no prior experience of fighting in a war. Naturally, the men had no idea what kind of brutality the war held also how much of a vital role the war would play in their futures. O’brien’s own experience with the war displayed that the fear of getting shamed before ones own peers played a main and also motivating factor for joining the draft.

Read More
1161 Words | 5 Pages

Introduction The Things They Carried is a text where writer Tim O’Brien the stories he encountered throughout his time in the Vietnam War. These stories, traumatic as well as warm and humorous, are ones that the author will never erase from his memory. It seems that O’Brien is retelling these stories to enlighten those who have never had experience on the battlefield in order to reach a certain level of understanding and to discover repercussions that it brings onto the human condition, both physically and mentally. Evidently, he wants to convey emotion within the reader. The stories also recall the life lessons that O’Brien learned about friendship, forgiveness, respect and reputation as well as foreignness and the other.

Read More
655 Words | 3 Pages

Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” is stories centered around the American soldiers in the Vietnam war. O’Brien explains how the harsh atmosphere of war can mentally and physically traumatize a soldier. In order to escape this atmosphere some men fantasize about the women they love. The men do not think of the women as people with their own thoughts and feelings, instead they think of them as forms of comfort or motivation for survival. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and Mark Fossie profess to hate the women they love because the women do not fulfil the fantasies the men have created.

Read More
918 Words | 4 Pages

The Vietnam War was a contentious and polarizing conflict that took place between 1955 and 1975. It pitted the Communist forces of North Vietnam, supported by the Soviet Union and China, against the South Vietnamese government, backed by the United States. Despite the enormous military and economic assistance provided by the US to the South Vietnamese, the war ended in a humiliating defeat for the Americans. The effectiveness of the Vietcong military and tactics played a significant role in this outcome. As historian Gabriel Kolko noted, the Vietcong's guerrilla tactics and ability to win the support of the local population gave them a crucial advantage over the US military (Kolko, 1985).

Read More
823 Words | 4 Pages

The Vietnam War had been viewed negatively on not just the war itself, it had also affected the American society, including those who survived it. The young men who were drafted to serve had no choice but to answer their nation’s calling. Armed Forces would then be entering an unknown war that awaited them. This battle not only introduced new forms of technology, for it had also brought a new style of combat. The U.S. and the South Vietnamese were assigned to be allies with forces to fight against the North Vietnamese (also known as Viet Cong) to prevent communism from taking over.

Read More
633 Words | 3 Pages

The Vietnam War, which lasted from 1955 to 1975, was one of the most controversial and divisive conflicts in modern history. It pitted the United States and its allies against the communist forces of North Vietnam and their supporters in the South. Despite the immense resources and military power brought to bear by the United States, the war ultimately ended in defeat, with the North Vietnamese communists capturing the capital city of Saigon in 1975. This essay will argue that the Vietnam War was a mistake and that Vietnam won no hearts or minds, but instead went the way of the war.

Read More
1962 Words | 8 Pages

The Vietnam war was a troubling war that lasted from 1955 to 1975. It was located in Vietnam and was fought by the U.S., as well as North and South Vietnam. There was bloodshed from both sides and many innocent lives lost. The Vietnam war was not only a troubling time in Vietnam, but also for the United States. Richard Nixon was the United States president at the time of the war and was the one that pushed America into joining the war, but realized he only cared about winning.

Read More

More about The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Open Document