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Vietnam In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

1290 Words6 Pages

A novel written about the debatably unnecessary war in Vietnam, The Things They Carried authentically paid tribute to those that served for the United States in the fight against communism. The lives of these soldiers were talked about descriptively by the author of the book, Tim O’Brien as he had a great ton of experience in the war being that he was able to survive long enough to have two different medics in his squadron as well as strongly prefer one over the other. The war veteran showcased the effect the war had on a person with the example of Mark Fossie’s visitor that never left (Mary Anne). She adapted to the war very quickly and gradually became less recognizable by Mark. O’Brien made it clear that war was unable to be explained to …show more content…

The reality of the war was that everyone expected to die and each soldier began to slowly accept the likeliness of themselves never going home. He uses this mindset the soldiers acquire to show how mortal every single character is regardless of what it is they carry. The reason why most of them carry a certain thing is either for good luck because they know that they are going to need it or for the simple reason that it will help them survive the humid environment that has a bug problem. The reality of the war is spoken about in this excerpt, “Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believe in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait” (O’Brien 200-201). The last sentence makes the writers point very clear when he talks about how war films may have a happy ending, but Vietnam never did. The writer makes it sound as if fighting in this war is comparable to a death sentence. This high death rate and denial of anything close to heroism that appears in the movies on this topic is once again another reason why The Things They Carried did not have a hero in

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Most people don’t know much about what exactly happened in the Vietnam War. Should this war have even happened? Many Americans believe this war was unnecessary for the armed forces to participate in, especially because of the damage caused in WWII. Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They carry, offers a collection of short stories in which each expresses the different Vietnam experiences. Every story in this novel was impressive for its own unique reason.

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More specifically, the novel depicts the adverse effects war has on soldiers during the war and after the war. O’Brien quickly shows the crippling effects of war through himself. He has been ripped from everything he knows and placed into a foreign land, in which, his life is constantly at risk. As the story progresses there begins to be a shift from the war, to life after it. It is again immediately apparent how difficult it was for soldiers to adjust back to normal life.

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The title The Things They Carried refers to the things soldiers mentally carry. They have to carry for the rest of their lives feelings of guilt, shame, responsibility, regret, grief, and fear. They also carry images of horror, death, and tragedy. Tim shares

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The things they carry will have a lot of effect on what they do and how they act in this war story. The things they carry will soon affect them emotionally, Medically, and by Selfishly. II. —Body

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In the "Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, Tim O'Brien, Norman Bowker, and the young boy whose name was never revealed are all examples of soldiers who couldn't or at least had a hard time talking about their expiriences in war. In the NPR interview with Tim O'Brien one caller who happened to be a Vietnam soldier said he “couldn’t tell anybody what [he] had witnessed”. Many of the soliders who served in Vietnam had a hard time talking about their experiences of the war. The soldiers felt as if nobody cared about how they felt because they were supposed to be strong-minded individuals. If they had someone to talk to often times bringing up memories of the horrifying scenes of the war made their situation worse.

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In the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’brien, includes many characters in his book, that were all affected by the war; each in a different way, Mary Anne, Rat Kiley and Norman Bowker were each affected by the vietnam war. Mary Anne significantly

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In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien expresses to the reader why the men went to the war and continued to fight it. In the first chapter, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien states “It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather they were too frightened to be cowards.” The soldiers went to war not because they were courageous and ready to fight, but because they felt the need to go. They were afraid and coped with their lack of courage by telling stories (to themselves or aloud) and applied humor to the situations they encountered.

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From the ancient to present, countries have battled eachother. Wars affect the life conditions of humanity. People lose their their families and proporties because of wars. The author mentioned Vietnam War in the pragraph that is called as ‘’ Coming to America’’. He demonstrated a family, who immigated to USA from Vietnam due to the civil war.

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In Vietnam 1960-1970, as death surrounded the land and homes, a story was born. “The Things They Carried” by Tim O'Brien is a heartbreaking and shivering story. Through O’Brien’s writing, he manages to portray strength, courage, loss, and love in such a dark place and time. Before, during, and after the Vietnam War characters struggle with their emotional traumas, O’Brien illustrates the various coping mechanisms and how a variety of characters use them to survive their experiences during and post-war. O’Brien uses multiple characters to portray the mental damage war causes.

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Behind the Scenes Violence In 1954, a war broke out in Vietnam due to the North Vietnamese’s desire to unify the entire country under a single communist regime (Brittanica) after they overthrew the French rule in Vietnam. During the Vietnam War, America intervened, causing many soldiers to be sent into Vietnam through the draft system. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien tells a story of some of the many experiences of the soldiers during the Vietnam War. However, even though the novel is based on the Vietnam War, the novel trivializes the distress of the Vietnamese people during the time of war.

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The soldiers in the Vietnam War are portrayed as losing themselves in the chaos and trauma of combat. Through the stories of the soldiers and their experiences, O’Brien explores the ways in which war strips away one's sense of identity and humanity. The author himself is depicted as losing himself in the war. O'Brien served in the Vietnam War, and his experiences inspired much of the book. Through the character of Tim O'Brien, the author explores the ways in which war can strip away one's sense of self and purpose.

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The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a narrative that looks into the realities of war that goes beyond just the action and storyline of combat. O’Brien gives an inside look on the thoughts and emotions that soldiers in a combat zone must be able to control to be effective at their job. O’Brien uses a listing technique to give better insight into the burdens soldiers carry with them to show the psychological burden of war. O’Brien utilizes a unique listing technique to serve as a narrative to convey his thoughts and experiences about war. The majority of lists in the first chapter of The Things They Carried blend both physical items and psychological burdens the soldiers carry, and O’Brien lists these items together in a detailed,

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He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.

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Literary analysis America’s war heroes all have the same stories to tell but different tales. Prescribed with the same coloring page to fill in, and use their methods and colors to bring the image to life. This is the writing style and tactic used by Tim O’Brien in his novel, “The Things They Carried”. Steven Kaplan’s short story criticism, The Undying Certainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, provides the audience with an understanding of O’Brien’s techniques used to share “true war” stories of the Vietnam War. Kaplan explains the multitude of stories shared in each of the individual characters, narration and concepts derived from their personal experiences while serving active combat duty during the Vietnam War,

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Tim O’Brien the author of "The Things They Carried," gives the idea that the mental burdens in war are more overpowering than the physical pain that soldiers in war have to deal with. "They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight" (258). The author argues that sadness, fear, longing and uncertainty of the future are just some of the emotional feelings that the soldiers have to experience in war and that these feelings outweigh the physical pain the soldier actually have to endure in order to stay alive. These burdens that the soldiers have to carry with them are a little better if the soldiers

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