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Literary analysis O'brien How to tell a true war story
What is tim o' briens attitude/tone in how to tell a true war story
How to tell a true war story by tim o'brien personification
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After the death of Curt Lemon, Rat Kiely fails to express his emotions and releases tension through violence. When the baby buffalo, a cultural symbol of Vietnam, refuses to accept Kiely’s advances, Kiely immediately resorts to shooting the animal with the goal of prolonging it’s suffering. O’Brien writes the scene to reflect the tension, “He put the muzzle right up to the mouth and shot the mouth away. Nobody said much”, The focus on Kiely’s aim towards its mouth shows his own need for communication and his continued attack mirrors how Lemon’s body was completely torn apart. In her essay “Truth and Fiction in Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried”, Marilyn Wesley connects Lemon’s death and Kiely’s violent choices, “The horrific aattack on the body of the animal mimics his friend’s fragmentation and evisceration.
O’Brien presents a variety of stories to present the complexity of war. “On The Rainy River” is a pre-war
(page 68). This is why Tim O’Brien writes the way he does. He wants the reader to believe his story and get a sense of what war is truly
There were many different type of women in the novel The Things They Carried. These roles of women were displayed in Martha, Linda and Kathleen the most. In my opinion Linda has one of the most important/impactful roles in the novel. Linda is Obrien’s child hood first love. Unfortunately she died at the age of nine because of a brain tumor.
Contrary to people thinking the United States should not interfere, too many young men were being drafted, and the war was pointless, O’Brien still pointed out that soldiers were still fighting in the war and facing the possibility of not knowing whether they would live to see another day. He described the gruesome memories that he any many other military figures were bringing back home. One scene describes his friend Norman Bowker after coming back home, driving around a lake eleven times thinking about his friend Kiowa drowning in a field of sewage which represents the ability to cut right to the heart of the matter; soldiers coming back from war in emotional hardships. Bowker goes on to write O’Brien only to hang himself a couple years later showing the impact the war had on soldiers and the lack of help they received after the war due to many people not accepting the war. His expresses his opinion by stating, “If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth,
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
Reader Response of “On the Rainy River” The short story “On the Rainy River” by Tim O 'Brien explains to the audience that all men are influenced to go into war, and that they should hide the fears and emotions that they may have along the journey. Throughout the short story the author explains his journey and opens up about his emotions when he was sent to war. Being the audience of this short story explains to you what every man must go through if they were to be sent to war.
In a scene where Curt Lemon accidentally steps on a mine and is torn into many pieces, his closest comrade, Rat Kiley, has trouble grieving the loss of his friend. In a furious state, Kiley tortures a water buffalo. This scene represents the emotional and physical torture the men in Vietnam are subjected to. Both the soldiers in Vietnam and the water buffalo are in a position where their lives are out of their control. Just as the water buffalo was tortured to death, most of the men in Alpha Company feel helpless in their situation.
A Long Walk To Water Linda Sue Park’s book entitled A Long Walk To Water is about two people on different paths that eventually meet. One character named Nya is a girl who walks 12 hours a day to get water for her family. While the other character Salva is a boy who is left in a country surrounded by war. In Salva’s story, his survival became possible through three main factors:his uncle, food and water; the memory of his family.
Tim O’Brien never lies. While we realise at the end of the book that Kiowa, Mitchell Sanders and Rat Kiley are all fictional characters, O’Brien is actually trying to tell us that there is a lot more truth hidden in these imagined characters than we think. This suggests that the experiences he went through were so traumatic, the only way to describe it was through the projection of fictional characters. O’Brien explores the relationship between war experiences and storytelling by blurring the lines between truth and fiction. While storytelling can change and shape a reader’s opinions and perspective, it might also be the closest in helping O’Brien cope with the complexity of war experiences, where the concepts like moral and immorality are being distorted.
In Phil Klay’s Redeployment, the war in Iraq is described as an intense masculine experience. Through the pages, the presence of women is marginal, if there is any woman in the short stories, and the reader enters in a realm of men and, more important, of what it means to be a real man. The assumption of war as a complete masculine experience might seem pretty obvious; however, Phil Klay is able to offer a crude and clear depiction of it. The author tells twelve different short stories of men who have only one thing in common: the experience of the Iraq War. But this is not simply a book about the war, but also about the consequences that this terrible experience has on the soldiers.
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.
The short stories he writes center on the importance of companionship and friendship during war, which very well may be first hand accounts since O’Brien knows what it is like to actually be in a war. The stories are narrated by a character named Tim O’Brien, a character with a fictional past named after the author and modeled after his experiences. Tim begins the story by telling the reader what each soldier packs with them to help them ease anxiety or remember home while the group marches, which is inspiration for the title. In this beginning chapter, Tim introduces the reader to each character, and most of the characters introduced in this first chapter will have stories that are focused on them or that they appear in later on in the book. The first chapter will introduce the backstory of many of O’Brien’s closest friends during the war, young soldiers like Kiowa, Lieutenant Cross, and Mitchell Sanders.
How it was shaped: Tim allowed the draft of the Vietnam war and societal pressures get to the best of him and he slowly tore himself apart, he started off as a confident incorrigible man. His morals later then became corrupted, he gave into the pressures, his self proclaimed Lone Ranger status had been infected and debunked by his end decision of serving in the Vietnam war. Thesis: In the story, On the Rainy River, the author, Tim O’Brien demonstrates that an individual allows societal pressures and expectations to override their core values, morals, and beliefs; peer pressure forces individuals to put their beliefs aside so they can fit in with everyone else. The narrator, Tim O’Brien faces a similar situation when he get’s drafted for the Vietnam War.
Even one small expression can change the meaning of what is being said. Example when
