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Things They Carried Rhetorical Analysis

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In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’brien reveals the hardship of war through different accounts of soldiers who experienced them. More specifically, he discusses the impact different characteristics of war had on the soldiers and the war itself. Tim O’brien uses personification, cause and effect, descriptive diction, and metaphor to convey how the animals made war horrifying, and the soldiers paranoid. Tim O’Brien’s purpose for having descriptive diction is to emphasize how the unordinary bugs terrified Rat, which ultimately made war horrifying. He reveals, “{Rat} couldn’t stop talking. Weird talk, too. Talking Talking about bugs, for instance: how the worst thing in Nam was the goddamn bugs. Big giant killer bugs, {Rat’d} …show more content…

Everybody. Meat for the bugs.” The author compares war to a banquet, a type of dinner party. A party where the bugs will enjoy themselves, and the soldiers won’t. A party where the bugs will be the consumers, while the soldiers will be the meal. A feast for the bugs, but a nightmare for the soldiers. As expected, this would leave the soldiers fearful, making them paranoid and terrified. The metaphor O’Brien used leaves one to portrait war as nothing less than horrifying, the ultimate death zone for soldiers. Beside from using metaphor, O’Brien uses personification to convey the effect animals had on the soldiers, and war itself. He mentions, “{you’d} hear a strange hum in your ears...Tree frogs, maybe, or snakes or flying squirrels or who-knew-what.” The author’s purpose for using personification in this particular passage is to reveal how chilling this war is, how it’s unlike any other battlefield. Also, how it intimidated the soldiers. The war must had been alarming for these animals to behave this way, abnormal and out of character. Another reason why this war is horrifying. It’s more than likely that these soldiers weren’t expecting to hear these type of noises from animals, so their

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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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RATS, yes even in the man-made trenches of which to protect the soldiers from the enemy also became a home to these disgusting, cat sized, evil, and naked faced rats, who fed off of the dead and or fallen troops of the war and they soldier 's bread making them be more cautious on where they put their bread because of the hideous rats. As if rats weren 't enough excluding the war, the storm-troops came in contact with harsh weapon machinery, it being so bad that if you were hit you 'd fly back and an arm shot off and leaving the victim hanging on barbed wire entanglement, and these were just some of the horrible things that happened. In conclusion, the rats and new machinery just caused more problem for the soldiers during the war, making it even more

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This chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”, showed us how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were dealing with the war both physically and psychologically. It also shows us how the Tim O'Brien behaved and felt when he was shot, wounded and had a bacteria infection on his butt and how the war changed the way he thought, and viewed the other soldiers around him. This chapter also contain a lot of psychological lens. From the way Tim O’Brien felt when he was shot and separated from his unit to a new unit to when he wanted revenge on Bobby Jorgenson for almost “killing” him.

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In the Novel The Things They Carried, the author, Tim Obrien recalls multiple stories during one of the most devastating wars in United States history. Through storytelling, Obrien casts light upon the horrifying reality of the Vietnam war and the struggles that Obrien’s men encounter, as well as all the other soldiers. Obrien uses the novel to represent the paradox that war is both horrible and beautiful. Obrien displays this through Ted Lavenders death, Curt lemons death, and the killing of the baby water buffalo. Obrien portrays the paradox that war is both horrible and beautiful through the death of Ted Lavender.

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The person had to deal with death and the reality of war under the worst case scenario. Bob “Rat” Kiley was that soldier and one of the many soldiers that left something in the war. He had lost his friend Curt Lemon and that’s the first sign that the war has been turning to be painful for him. This coping mechanism for the death was to write letters to lemon’s sister and he shot a baby Water Buffalo. This coping mechanism is seen in the chapter “How to tell a true war story”, shows how he has been affected and explained the toll the war had taken on him.

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Finally war kill lots of people. One example is “I think we ought to bomb the daylights out of them, as long as we don’t hit any women or children or old people, don’t you?… ‘Or hospitals,’ he went on. ’And naturally no schools. Or churches.’ ‘We must also be careful about works of art,’...

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The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, illustrates the experiences of a man and his comrades throughout the war in Vietnam. Tim O’Brien actually served in the war, so he had a phenomenal background when it came to telling the true story about the war. In his novel, Tim O’Brien uses imagery to portray every necessary detail about the war and provide the reader with a true depiction of the war in Vietnam. O’Brien starts out the book by describing everything he and his comrades carry around with them during the war. Immediately once the book starts, so does his use of imagery.

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