ipl-logo

Why The Challenges At War In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

757 Words4 Pages

Challenges at War Robert E. Lee once said, “What a cruel thing war is… to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors”. The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien takes place in Vietnam. He and a handful of other men experience things only one can image and hope they will never have to experience again. They learn how death among them can greatly affect them, and many others. War is not an easy task to get through and these men all had different coping methods. 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 …show more content…

These men befriend monks in need of help. After helping them they make the monks clean their weapons. “ setting up here. It's wrong. I don’t care what, it’s still a church” (O’Brien 116). Kiowa knows it is wrong to bring war into a place of peace. With this peace of mind, it shows how good of a person Kiowa is. It showed why people like him as a person. In a like manner, O’Brien discusses morality in the chapter “The Man I Killed.” In the chapter “The Man I Killed” O’Brien killed a man he felt should not have been killed. Kiowa helps O’Brien through it. “I'm serious. Nothing anybody could do. Come on, stop staring” (O’Brien 120). O’Brien feels extremely guilty for killing someone. He is not sure what to do or how to feel. O’Brien does not exactly say if he was the man who actually killed him, or if someone else did. He hints that if it was not him that killed the poor man. Death has a way of changing a

Show More
Related
213 Words | 1 Pages

He thought about the importance of the human being was violated with the blame on himself. All in all, O’Brien gets all these details from his imagination and from his guilt. After O’Brien killed the man

Read More
882 Words | 4 Pages

In this chapter, O’Brien heavily expressed his ideas through Kiowa’s disappearance and death. In addition to symbolizing a false necessity, the aftermath of Kiowa’s death further exemplifies his point. For example, from pages 162 to 169, the truth behind Kiowa’s cause of death is explained. Basically, the night before he died, all of the men were lying low and remaining incognito. That night was perfectly still, until a fellow soldier shined his flashlight on a picture of his girlfriend to show Kiowa.

Read More
641 Words | 3 Pages

The morning after the incident in the sewage field, the soldiers look for Kiowa 's body. Jimmy Cross helps in the search and watches his men. He sees a young soldier (this is presumably O 'Brien, but O 'Brien has chosen to tell this story in the third person) standing off by himself, shaking, in his own world. Cross thinks about Kiowa 's death, and how Kiowa, a brave and decent kid, absolutely didn 't deserve to die in a field of sewage.

Read More
961 Words | 4 Pages

The chapter “The Ghost Soldiers,” connects with the theme shame and guilt because O’Brien felt guilty and had trouble dealing with the past situations

Read More
705 Words | 3 Pages

Although the soldier he killed was an enemy soldier, instead of vilifying him he was able to humanize the man. O’Brien was able to describe the physical appearance of the soldier and imagine her life before war. The author was able to portray an emotional connection and made the line between friend and enemy almost vanish. This was able to reveal the natural beauty of shared humanity even in the context of war’s horror. O’Brien is able to find the beauty in the midst of this tragic and horrible event.

Read More
1056 Words | 5 Pages

All I could do was gape at the fact of the young man’s body’ (O’Brien 350). Consequently, O’Brien is to live with this guilt for a long time. ‘it was a difficult moment, but I did what seemed right’ (O’Brien 348). Similarly, Kathleen is reminded of the dead soldier and their appointment by even a small hint like a letter. For instance, she feels uncomfortable after seeing the mysterious letter inside her house.

Read More
249 Words | 1 Pages

O’Brien confuses the text ,when he talks about “the man I killed” with an image of himself being the killer, but later in the chapter a mention telling the man to “run” but the grenade blows up before he could say run. The man dead did not affect him at the moment it

Read More
766 Words | 4 Pages

Tim O'Brien used strong language and harsh diction to emphasize Azar's point of view to his audience. Before finding Kiowa's body, Azar mocks that this was a humorous irony because it was "shit field" and that his body "was wasted in waste", clearly disassociating from the gruesome reality of his death. As soon as Kiowa's body was located, the sight of the actual body makes him feel terrible enough to apologize saying "those foolish jokes - I didn't mean anything". Tim O’Brien uses strong and direct diction to describe the severity of Kiowas death and the effect it had on the platoon. His use of direct language allows the reader to experience the scene from his and his platoon’s perspective.

Read More
1292 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
699 Words | 3 Pages

O’ Brien uses this one death alone, to show how it fed into guilt instead of glory or

Read More
480 Words | 2 Pages

Kiowa was O’Brien’s closest friend in Vietnam, making his death extremely difficult, and guilt ridden; 20 years later, O’Brien finally forgives himself and accepts the ending. Death is never serene, and it will never get any easier, but grief can, and

Read More
1148 Words | 5 Pages

The beginning of “The Man I Killed” starts off with a thorough description of the man’s features. The use of asyndeton is prevalent, but then flows into polysyndeton. This unbroken chain created a tone of disbelief. This is the disbelief that O’Brien has for himself; that he had just killed a man, a human. Not a monster like what the fog made him out to be.

Read More
1285 Words | 6 Pages

When he thinks about this he thinks that is why Captain Johansen is such a good leader, and this is where the theme of the story comes into play which is to stand up for what you think is right. After a while of war O’Brien gets somewhat desensitized to killing people and the death around him. He says

Read More
543 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
639 Words | 3 Pages

The fiction novel, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien reflects the surreal nature of war by using literary devices to express the deep felt emotions of the soldiers. The soldiers in the Alpha Company endure both physical and emotional hardships while fighting in the Vietnam War. These hardships affect the soldier's mental states and these stories give insight on how they deal with that. The surreal nature of the war reveals a false sense of reality by only allowing the soldiers to view a situation from one’s own perspective, as illustrated by First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s obsession with Martha, Norman Bowker’s guilt, and Tim O’Brien’s stories. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s obsession with Martha serves as his biggest distraction in

Read More

More about Why The Challenges At War In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Open Document