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Tim O Brien: A Short Story

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Recommended: War museum thesis

I’ve never heard a war story that hasn’t made me clench or cry. Museums about war specifically, because they always give you a different view from what you normally see in movies. Tim O'Brien's the things we carried showed an aspect of war that you don’t normally see. Do you ever wonder what it is that soldiers would want to die with if they were to die. Or what they think is the most important item they own that will always need to be with them. Before this story, I never thought about it. Soldiers are human beings that risk there life, they probably have someone back home or something they think is an absolute necessity to have on them. When they're scared they probably have a picture, a letter, or even food to give them just the smallest …show more content…

This stuff animal was my best friend, it was black with a white belly it had nice long legs and arms and it was a monkey. I took it everywhere with me, until one day I lost it. I had seen the same monkey stuffed animal all of the place but I knew it wasn’t the same animal. So, I found a knew thing to love and comfort me, and that was my blanket. My mother gave me this blanket for christmas. It is gray with fake fur and a nice soft side. I take this blanket with me to hotels, family occasions, vacations, and normally just to bed. Although I am an adult, and don’t need my blanket to fall asleep. I do like to have my blanket so it gives me warmth and comfort at night. This blanket reminds me of the green plastic poncho the solders used in the story, something that kept them warm and comfortable. In Ted Lavender's case, something that gave him hope after he had gotten …show more content…

But, my favorite food makes me less worried, or less stressed. When I was in my deepest stage on my depression it seemed like although my world was empty my tummy was full and happy. My favorite food are tacos, but you can’t just walk around eating tacos all day. But, at any chance I would make tacos or get taco bell. Food is a big comfort zone for many like myself. Food was a comfort zone for Harry Dobbin, who would carry peaches in heavy syrup to pour over his pound cake. This was Harry's favorite food, he would eat it because it made him comfortable. These men are going through a very scary life threatening time and they need something to keep them comfortable and

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In this book, Tim O'brien uncovers all his encounters in insight about the war; and also stories about his kindred warriors, and makes a genuine, yet over the top about them. He clarifies how he feels through stories that are hard to unmistakably distinguish as "genuine." This book has a great deal of subjects, demise and brutality is one of the real topics. A major topic and point in Tim O'Brien's novel is what number of circumstances hurt the warriors' lives.

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The Things They Carried Thematic Essay “Special honor or respect shown publicly,” is the definition of homage and homage is the biggest motivator in Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried. He wrote this book to pay homage to the men who died for our country during his fight in Vietnam. It is a theme that carries throughout this collection of stories. The Things They Carried is a way to see what these soldiers went through and who they were before passing away.

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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.

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Before reading the novel, one might merely think of tangible objects being carried during the war, but after finishing the novel, it is the intangible feelings of affection, passion, and heart-warming images that are the most important in the readers mind. In The Things They Carried, it is evident to the reader that the emotional feelings being carried have a much bigger effect on soldiers than simple materials used for

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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.

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In Tim O'Brien's “The Things They Carried,” a fictional novel about an American platoon during the Vietnam War, O’Brien insists that the book and stories being told are real, only to contradict himself after a few pages. I believe O’Brien does not do this because he is an eccentric writer, but because he is trying to make us believe that these fictional characters’ deaths and hardships are real, in order to convey a message about how there is beauty in death. While reading through the stories it is often difficult to separate what is fictitious, and what is true. Throughout the novel we seem to find two different “truths”, which are “story truth” and “happening truth”. O’Brien uses war related imagery to demonstrate the power of storytelling by describing the brutal realities of death and how soldiers meet it and deal with it.

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The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.

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