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The Things They Carried Morally Ambiguous Characters

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The Things They Carried is a novel written by Tim O'Brien which follows the daily thoughts, actions, and moments of a company serving in the Vietnam War. The meaning of this work was to depict the gruesome images and effects of war as well as the toll it can take on people. This is executed by utilizing morally ambiguous characters, which are characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evi or purely good. Many characters in the book are morally ambiguous, but one, an unnamed vietcong soldier who was killed in the novel stands out the most. This vietcong soldier is described as poorly structured, with a small body, slender fingers, frail wrists, and a delicate face. The chapter “The Man I Killed” opens up describing his features as well as his wounds. As stated in the chapter “Ambush”, Tim O’Brien spotted the Vietcong soldier and threw a grenade towards his direction. The soldier saw the grenade, but it was too late. At first thought, the reader would see this person as the enemy and not think much of it, but then, Tim O’Brien becomes lost in his thoughts, and begins to see things from the soldier’s perspective. …show more content…

O’Brien begins thinking about how the soldier’s life must have been, simply by going off of his description. O’Brien says that this soldier loved math but was bullied for being smart and having a miniscule body. O’Brien also says that this soldier was told many stories about brave warriors who served their country just like us, but the soldier was scared, and he prayed that he wouldn’t become old enough to fight. This moment of O’Brien seeing life from the enemy’s shoes gives the reader sympathy for the vietcong soldier. O’Brien explaining this now gives a new way to connect to our “enemy” and truly questions if anyone in war is purely evil or purely

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If I Die in a Combat Zone, author Tim O'Brien argued that the Vietnam War was evil through his depictions of the harmful actions against the Vietnamese, first hand experiences of the soldiers, and lastly, his opinion throughout the war. O’Brien demonstrates the mutilation and murders of the innocent Vietnamese people by explaining how the soldiers belittled the orientals. The soldiers captured three old men and decided to tie them up (130). These old men were treated poorly by the soldiers because they were being gagged and restrained. Most of the company wasn’t concerned about the old men’s physical condition, since they were prisoners.

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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.

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O’Briens novel The Things They Carried is a unique text because each chapter tells an individual story. The work also becomes misleading because the chapters are told from different viewpoints. Rather than O’Brien using a traditional flow of chronological order, he tells the stories of his comrades to appeal to the reader at different times in the book. The reader can also begin to question O'Brien's reliability and truthfulness because of his uncommon style. The purpose is O’Briens way to cope with his experience in the Vietnam War; he retouches each memory individually depicting the story of his tragic experience at war.

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The Things They Carried is written by the author, Tim O’Brien, and follows the protagonist, Tim O’Brien and his fellow foot soldiers in the Vietnam War. This novel captures the nature of the Vietnam War through mainly fictional war stories. These war stories are told through the eyes of the main character, Tim O’Brien, who tells and writes these stories as a way to cope with what he’s been through in the war. The Things They Carried follows Tim O’Brien on his hero’s journey and coming of age adventure.

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Tim O’Brien was involved in the Vietnam war and was part of the platoon he writes about. In the chapter ‘In the field’ he tells the story through Lieutenant Jimmy Cross's eyes, he explains how this boy was with one of his good friends, Kiowa, when they were walking through the shit field late at night, “They had huddled together under their ponchos,the rain cold and steady,the water rising to their knees...and for awhile they talked about their families and hometowns”

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The Things They Carried is an ugly book. The themes and topics throughout the book are gruesome and horrific, but Tim O’Brien writes about them in such a way that portrays the Vietnam War as almost beautiful. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the chapter, “The Man I Killed” is an example of a terrific piece of writing because it utilizes thoughtful symbolism, graphic imagery, and conflict to portray the Vietnam War in an accurate way. “The Man I Killed” uses symbols, imagery, and conflict to tell an accurate war story. First, O’Brien uses symbolism throughout the book, but specifically in “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien writes about the symbol of a butterfly.

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The Things They Carried is a work of American literature written by Tim O'Brien. In the literature, Tim expresses the importance of storytelling a lot, particularly when telling war stories. Storytelling can give a huge impact if done correctly, and that’s what Tim has done in this novel. The idea of storytelling is examined over and over again in the book when Tim begins most of his chapters, including “On the Rainy River” and “How to Tell a True War Story,” by saying things like “This is one story I’ve never told before” (O’Brien, 37). Him starting off with statements like that make the reader intrigued and skeptic, almost believing what he will be saying is true.

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Tim O 'Brien told stories about what other soldiers had to face during the war,but he also talked about how the war affected him. . Tim O’Brien was a young man who had his whole life planned before the vietnam war. When Tim O 'brien killed a man well he was in the war. Tim talks about the person he had killed “ He was not a fighter. His health was poor, his body small and frail.

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Literary Analysis of The Things They Carried Young men and women who go off to war and rarely return home the same. The complex psychological scars often outnumber the physical. In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien emphasizes the emotional struggles faced by a group of infantrymen during the Vietnam war. The author, himself a Vietnam veteran, is now well past seventy years old, yet he still suffers the effects of this war.

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Periodically, he would speak about his nights of watch, where his mind would run away with him. But, the scariest aspect of these seemingly outrageous pictures of death and ambush by Viets in the night is that they were not far from the reaches of reality. In the dead of night, O’Brien said that he couldn’t help but think that “we were fooling ourselves to think that we remained the hunters, in control of the war and our destinies” and that “all the enemy need do was steal up on our rear” (95). More than once, he mentions that his sense of courage was a sort of lost cause, and that hope for bravery was pointless in such a place so devoid of mercy. Even now, after all that he endured, Tim seems to have learned something from war: “it may not make a man of you, but it teaches you that manhood is not something to scoff”

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