The Things They Carried Rhetorical Analysis

The Stories Told by the Soldiers In the book The Things We Carried by Tim O'Brien, he tells the reader stories about his experience in the Vietnam war. He tells stories about before, during and after the war. O’Brien explains his feelings towards the war by hinting it in many of his stories. He uses juxtaposition, diction, irony, metafiction, and repetition. His feelings towards war seem to change, at times he shows the feeling of hatred, in other cases he’ll have the feeling of sorrow and tension, or his tone will go from humorous to solemn in a sentence. In the chapters They things They Carried, Enemies and Friends, How to tell a true War Story, Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong, and Style best explain his feeling towards war.

In the

This chapter is told by Rat Kiley. Rat was one of Curt Lemon’s closest friend during the war and when he is kill, Rat decides to write Lemon's sister a letter. Rat's letter talks about her brother and the crazy stunts he attempted, he writes about the fun memories they had together, Rat sees the letter as touching and personal; however, Lemon's sister's finds the letter to be inappropriate and disturbing. Curt Lemon’s sister never writes back, causing Rat is offended and angered, as it’s noted his sister never writes back. “The whole platoon stood watching (Rat is shoot the baby water buffalo), feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn't a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo. Curt Lemon was dead. Rat Kiley had lost his best friend in the world. Later in the week he would write to the guy's sister, who would not write back, but for now it was a question of pain. he shot off the tail. He shot away chunks of meat below the ribs.” (68) This quote shows the pain O’brien and others are going through. It shows the consequence of one soldier forming a close bond with another Rat is shooting at the baby water buffalo because it’s a form to relieve his stress and anger. He tried releasing these feeling by writing a letter to lemon’s sister but the fact she never wrote back and thought his letter was gross made everything worse so Rat is dealing with it by

In front of the house they see a girl dancing, they realize that the house must of belong to her family and she is the only survivor out of the fire. The Vietnamese girl’s dancing despite the lack of music makes clear an innate human ability to find pleasure even during moments of abject horror. O’Brien’s tone in this chapter is kind of depressing. The vietnamese girl is clearly upset but she’s dancing because it’s a way she coping with the lost of her family. A while later, when we moved out of the hamlet, she was still dancing. "Probably some weird ritual," Azar said, but Henry Dobbins looked back and said no, the girl just liked to dance.” (136) In this quote they’re calling her dance a "weird ritual,” making it seem stranger than it already is but in reality dancing is her way of coping with her