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The Things They Carried Tone Analysis

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The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brian , which shifts from the things the soldiers found memorible to all the tragedies of war, uses powerful diction, exhibits beautiful detail, and portrays the perfect tone to convey that friendships are always needed because sometimes they shed light on the hardest times. O’Brian’s tone and diction, throughout the book, creates a sense of meloncholy and anger. In the beginning of the book, O’Brian portrayed the souldiers as, “ Carriers of all the emotional baggage of men who might die.”(pg 20) A souldier carries enough of their own baggage that eventually over time they will carry to much of the worlds baggage, that it will take a tole on a person. Even the strongest of the men, could break down as if their entire worlds are being shattered. O’Brian and Norman Bowker, never really had that tight …show more content…

They saw each other as friends but also as team mates. Norman Bowker was an emotional man who is self- loathing and held so much guilt after the death of Kiowa. Bowker never really knew what to do with his life after the war and turned to O’Brian to tell his story for him. O’Brian felt a bit of pity for the man when he killed himself in a YMCA locker room one afternoon.(pg 149) When he recieved the letter of all the emotions running through Bowkers mind, O’Brian said, “Norman Bowker’s letter hit me hard. For years ive felt a certain smugness about how easy i had made the shift from war to peace.” (pg 151) O’Brian never really found a connection with Norman until after the letter was written. Norman Bowker was carrying so much weight of being in the war that eventally it did the worst thing possible to him, it killed him. No soldier wants to hear about a member of their troop die because they were fighting battles inside their own mind of

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These are all examples of how Norman Bowker had changed throughout the story. He went from being innocent, or without war on his mind ever, to having nothing else to say to anyone if it didn’t involve war. After he had came back from war, he was not able to keep a job, he was not able to keep a conversation going with anyone because no one knew what he was going through. He was also suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) which in the long run, made him feel as if no one would understand him or his story because no one else was in war when he was and no one experienced what he

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841 Words | 4 Pages

During the war, many things happen to O’Brien including almost dying of shock after getting shot in the butt. The medic at the time was a boy named

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He actually tries to do the same thing in the middle of the story “On the Rainy River”, he "slipped out of his own skin" and watched himself (much like Elroy did) in his attempts to decide whether he should escape to Canada. At the end of the chapter, however, the importance of the physicality of "O 'Brien" reemerges. O 'Brien was literally paralyzed as he tried to force himself from the boat. So it  shows that he had denied his own feelings and submitted to the stories of other people, like the older generation of veterans whom he despises, and to what he considered cowardice. At least until finally

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423 Words | 2 Pages

Throughout the entire story, the narrator explains how close the men become to each other. You become brothers and you trust each other with your lives. In the chapter, The Ghost Soldiers, Tim O’Brien sees the men he was on the platoon with and is

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912 Words | 4 Pages

He could not deal with his memories that consumed him and eventually took his own life. Bowker has an internal struggle with himself and his mind after the war, especially with the memories that eventually envelop his entire life. Bowker witnessed many terrible atrocities in his time in Vietnam. His time in the war was indicative of the future he would have after seeing what he saw. He had to witness the other soldiers in his platoon die, the enemy die, the slow but sure death of innocence in his fellow man.

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1211 Words | 5 Pages

Bowker did not execute writing like Tim O’Brien, but he poured out his feelings in his own set of words: a diary. Therefore, Bowker wrote a lengthy letter discussing his problem of finding a meaning to his life after the war, and he sent it to his old friend, soldier and writer Tim O’Brien. From there, O’Brien edited the letter to the best of his writer’s knowledge and published it in the piece “Speaking Courage.” Although, many years after this book and Bowker’s death, another book by Tim O’Brien was published called The Things They Carried. Bowker had been yet again mentioned in a couple chapters of this story, specifically “Speaking of Courage” and “Notes.”

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You can see that that by him dealing with the loss of Linda, the same coping method helped him get over Linda’s death, also helped him while he was at war in Vietnam. For example when Norman and Kiowa died unexpectedly he quickly knew how to deal with it. As soon as they die Obrien tries to keeps their names alive by talking about them through some war stories. Linda was his prime motivator to help him believe that storytelling help aids the healing process of pain, confusion and the depression of death especially and unexpected ones.

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1509 Words | 7 Pages

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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757 Words | 4 Pages

O’Briens intended audience is people who have an interest in war, and uses mortality and death, along with morality to help the audience get a deeper understanding of what could possibly occur at war. First, O’Brien discusses how mortality and death greatly affected many of the men around him. In the chapter ” In the Field” Kiowa is gone and there is nothing they could do to save him. The

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813 Words | 4 Pages

Firstly, both of the authors’ stories end with the protagonists surviving the war, but making them feel regretful and unworthy of living. O’Brien survives after being a soldier during the

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Norman is unable to find words to describe his struggles and therefore can’t move on from the war. This just shows that the horrors don’t stop, even after the war. Norman is desperately grasping for a way to understand everything but he is unable to. Because of this, Norman, unlike Roy, is unable to cope and eventually takes his own life to escape his own mind. Additionally, Tim O’Brien himself has been greatly afflicted by the psychological aspect of war.

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1093 Words | 5 Pages

Imagine being drafted to move thousands of miles away from the life you love to fight a war you hated. This is the unfortunate reality for Tim O’Brien In The Things They Carried. O’Brien explains his experiences of war in Vietnam, what it took to get him there, and his relationships with the other men in his platoon. He portrays guilt and pride through storytelling and intertwines the two by showing how the men often feel guilty for the actions they pursue or decisions they make based on their pride.

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688 Words | 3 Pages

“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.

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925 Words | 4 Pages

The things these men carried were solid with weight and are able to be transported from one place to another by physically moving the object. However, the reader soon discovers it also refers to an emotional weight. As Kaplan states, “Obrien introduces the reader to some of the things, imaginary and concrete, emotional and physical, that the average soldier had to carry through the jungles of Vietnam” (2/8). In the Army there is a saying, “Go to war, or go to jail”. During the time of the Vietnam War, a majority of the men were drafted.

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845 Words | 4 Pages

This is evident when Mr. O’Brien says, “I would go to the war – I would kill and maybe die – because I was embarrassed not to,” (pg. 57.) In the end the author realized what he must do and went back home, so he could fight in the Vietnam

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