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Truth In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

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After reading The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, it is astoundingly clear that truth plays an essential role in the story’s overall meaning and portrayal as an authentic Vietnam War story. In this complex narrative, the topic of truth has been interpreted in many specific and intricate ways. Many interpret his usage of truth similarly to one another, stating how “war inevitably imposes a compromised version of the interpretation of a genuine experience”, causing O’Brien to project altered truths so the experience can truly connect and express its true state (Wesley 2). This common trend seen in these authors’ coverage of truth is that they examine the synthesized, story truth that Tim O’Brien utilized in his story aimed to better emphasize …show more content…

Norman Bowker is a character throughout the story that has the overwhelming struggle in confronting and accepting the bitter realities of war, with his actions during it echoes with him. Holding the truth of the death of those around him and the overall trauma-inducing environment of Vietnam eventually led Bowker to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, being completely unable to integrate back into society. It is seen in Bowker’s character that the truth of war severely affected his mental state and perspective, as the remains of guilt and remorse resulted in his untimely suicide by hanging (O’Brien 99). Mary Anne Bell is also a very accurate example. Being represented in the novel as a symbol of peace and innocence, it is soon developed that the truth of war slowly transforms her as she becomes completely immersed in the reality of war around her. This had severe consequences seen as the result is her becoming a mysterious product of war, indicting a mentally-ill state upon her, leading to her disappearance at the end of Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong in the jungles of Vietnam. It is clear that the darkness and evil true nature of Vietnam corrupted her, emphasized in the line, “She was dangerous” (O’Brien 74). These characters and others in the novel are a representation of the massive impact truth has on their psychological well-being, relationships, and

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The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is an emotion provoking collection of short stories about the Vietnam War. One story “Speaking of Courage” is a post-war story about Norman Bowker, who was a member of the Alpha Team, and him struggling to cope with what had happened in Vietnam, while looping around a lake in his hometown. The next story of the cycle, “Notes”, is written by Tim O’Brien (the character) in the first person as a footnote or background about why “Speaking of Courage” was written and what happened to Norman Bowker. We learn that he sends a letter to Tim O’Brien to request a story written about his struggle to cope with the past and the death of Kiowa. The letter that Norman Bowker sends to Tim O’Brien was a plea for help from

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The book I choose is "The Things They Carried", by Tim O'Brien. This book talks about Vietnam War, and it reflects how soldiers can be affected by war and how they can react to it. "Character is what you are in the dark." This quote is a reflection of how people can be fake to other. What I mean by this is that when there are with there friends they seen to be happy.

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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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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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Tim O’Brien’s novel features stories of soldiers during the Vietnam War, and highlights the emotional trauma soldiers bear as they struggle to fit the harsh societal standards set upon them. The Things They Carried is a quasi-memoiristic collection of war stories that are all interconnected and flow together to create one story of humanity. O’Brien uses his own experiences

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In the chapter, “Speaking of Courage” we learn about Norman Bowker’s life after he returned home from war and his stories of what happened while in war.

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No doubt the events and occurrences that took place during the Vietnam War were nothing short of gory, horrendous, and unimaginable, but is it true that the surreal horror of the war can only be captured and lived again through stories recounted by those involved in the war itself? First-hand accounts, real or made-up, are crucial to being able to experience the emotional and physical struggles the soldiers of the Vietnam War experienced. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien states, “I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth” (171). This means that stories are the only way to capture one’s raw war experiences and emotions, so the best way the surreal horror of the war in Vietnam

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Norman Bowker is the epitome of how wartime can be harmful even after the war is over. Norman was a Vietnam Veteran who returned home in the book to find his life to be nothing like it was just years previous when he departed Bowker returned to find his girlfriend had married another man, his father was silent and disappointed in Bowkers lack of War Medals. Bowker found his home town changed and he missed the excitement of the War. Bowker also has trouble talking about the war. He reaches out to an old War friend who fails him.

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The Vietnam War is widely considered one of the most traumatizing wars ever and had at least 58,220 recorded deaths. In his 1990 war novel, author Tim O’Brien asserts that easing the pain of trauma is extremely difficult to manage. However, through memories, storytelling, and limiting the weight of emotional agony, alleviating these struggles becomes less difficult. Simply recalling the memories of people who have died and made an impact on one’s life can relieve traumatizing experiences. Tim O’Brien recalls his first encounter concerning death which involved his first love, Linda, and while pondering this, he explains that “as a writer now, I want to save Linda’s life.

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In The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien is successful in addressing essential details about emotional life of soldiers during the Vietnam War instead of historically recorded facts. O’Brien tends to focus profusely more on the emotional impact on each aspect of the war. He certainly does not focus on the historical events or facts. The premise of the novel regards the soldiers, nothing in this novel is entirely factual, as it was comprised of mostly emotional anecdotes and personal stories of those soldiers. Because the focus of his work of literature is not the premise of historical fact, he has no obligation to convey the pure truth in contrast to adjusting the facts to appeal to his preferred focus, the emotional aspect of the war.

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