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theme of fear in novels
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Human Instinct in The Things They Carried
Fear is a strong emotion that is constantly haunting the minds of the men in Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried. Fear is handled by different men in different ways. However, through the characters of Dave Jenson and Lee Struck in "Enemies" and "Friends," two opposing reactions can be seen. HCAL defines cultural studies as something that can "...either create community or cause division and alienation"(240). By using cultural studies it is possible to analyze these two stories to understand why these two men react differently to he same emotion under different circumstances.
In "Enemies," Jenson and Struck have a fight over a missing jackknife which evolves from a broken nose to a broken mind. The two men become enemies; not only are they faced with the fear of war, but also of the fear of each other. Jenson was affected the most by this. He began to loose his sanity watching both the enemy lines and his own men trusting no one. In an attempt to justify the fight with Struck, he breaks his own nose along with yelling and shooting off rounds of ammunition. The fear that built up inside of Jenson causes him to be alienated from the rest of the Army.
Unlike the prior story, in "Friends," fear helps to bring Jenson and Struck closer together. They are both afraid of returning from the war dismembered in some fashion. To prevent this, the men form a agreement that if one of them is hurt in such a way, that the other would kill them. Because of this pact, the men are united with a common trust. This helps to subside the fear and allow them to not be as scared of the war.
These two stories show how fear can cause the bond of friendship and community or hatred which resulted in alienation. The two character, Lee Strunk and Dave Jenson, show how a mans reaction to fear can affect him. In the story "Enemies," Jenson slowly begins to isolate himself as a way to keep away from Strunk. He views everyone as the enemy making his foxholes near the perimeter and always keeping his back covered. This constant fear ate way at Jenson until he finally lost his sanity. In "Friends," Jenson and Strunk take deal with fear in a more positive way.
younger son of Edward IV and as no one was sure what had happened to...
In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the readers follow the Alpha Company’s experiences during the Vietnam War through the telling’s of the main character and narrator, Tim. At the beginning of the story, Tim describes the things that each character carries, also revealing certain aspects of the characters as can be interpreted by the audience. The book delineates what kind of person each character is throughout the chapters. As the novel progresses, the characters’ personalities change due to certain events of the war. The novel shows that due to these experiences during the Vietnam War, there is always a turning point for each soldier, especially as shown with Bob “Rat” Kiley and Azar. With this turning point also comes the loss of innocence for these soldiers. O’Brien covers certain stages of grief and self-blame associated with these events in these stories as well in order to articulate just how those involved felt so that the reader can imagine what the effects of these events would be like for them had they been a part of it.
Our first major character is Boo Radley, who is first introduced as Scout and Jem walk past the Radley house every day after school. Jem, Scout, and Dill are fascinated with the chilly stories of Boo’s past, spending many summers acting out his life and imagining what he is like. As the story progresses, the children come to realize that Boo was in fact an intelligent child, but was poorly treated by his “foot-washing Baptist” father, resulting in mental problems at a very young age. Boo Radley is one of the eponymous “mockingbirds” of the book, the other being Tom Robinson. Mockingbirds, as explained in the book by Atticus, “don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy... but sing their hearts out for us. That is why it is a sin to kill a mockingbird." (90) The analogy holds true for Boo, a young boy damaged by his father’s ambitions, and is partially the reason he has shied away from society. He is already experienced the harmful effects of a racist/judgmental culture and realizes how evil society is. Towards the end of the book, Scout ...
Tim O’brien, the author of The Things They Carry, effectively uses language to describe the struggles of the soldiers and civilians during the Vietnam war. A prime example of this use of language can be seen within one of the stories in the book known as “Style.” Along with a serious mood, O’brien uses a series of devices such as description, repetition and contrast to emphasize the attitudes and feelings of both the soldiers and civilians of Vietnam during the war.
Scout and her brother Jem always run past the Radley house in fear of the man going by the name of ‘Boo Radley’ in the neighborhood. They play games a...
Henry VIII wanted a male to take the throne when he passed away. He paved the way for his son Edward. After Edward died in 1553 Elizabeth found herself once again in political intrigue. [Elizabeth’s older sister, M...
In Tim O' Brien's, The Things They Carried, he talks about the Vietnam war and how it changed many things and reminded him of many events in his past. O' Brien uses the psychological approach to tell his experience towards Death. The things that they carried had all represented a part of each soldier and past memories. Tim O’ Brien indicates the psychoanalytical approach in “Lives of the Dead” that can be related to the psychoanalytic criticism by Lois Tyson. O’Brien uses “The Lives of the Dead” to illustrate that his war narrative has a larger purpose than simply showing readers what it was like to be in a war and how it may feel to lose someone, a friend or family that was loved dearly. Throughout this story their are smaller stories about death in Vietnam that lead back to the story of O’Brien himself, a man who writes in order to make sense of his life, especially in relation to other deaths that had occurred in his presence.
Edward V’s place in history rests only on his being the oldest of the two Princes in the Tower. Otherwise, he is merely a pawn whereby Richard of Gloucester became King Richard III.
In The Things The, O’Brien talks a fair amount about himself. It becomes clear that he was affected greatly by his experiences of the war and that he still has to try to cope with them everyday. Also clear is that he leaves whether or not the characters of this book are real or not as ambiguous. He leaves this ambiguous to make the point that the truth of the story doesn’t matter. What actually matters is the feelings his characters make him and the readers feel. He makes this clear by dedicating his book to his characters, by writing a conversation between himself and one of these characters, and by actually telling us that what is factually true doesn’t matter, rather an emotional truth does matter. Also clear is that in order to cope with the guilt from the war, Tim O’Brien writes The Things They Carried.
In The Things They Carried, an engaging novel of war, author Tim O’Brien shares the unique warfare experience of the Alpha Company, an assembly of American military men that set off to fight for their country in the gruesome Vietnam War. Within the novel, the author O’Brien uses the character Tim O’Brien to narrate and remark on his own experience as well as the experiences of his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company. Throughout the story, O’Brien gives the reader a raw perspective of the Alpha Company’s military life in Vietnam. He sheds light on both the tangible and intangible things a soldier must bear as he trudges along the battlefield in hope for freedom from war and bloodshed. As the narrator, O’Brien displayed a broad imagination, retentive memory, and detailed descriptions of his past as well as present situations. 5. The author successfully uses rhetoric devices such as imagery, personification, and repetition of O’Brien to provoke deep thought and allow the reader to see and understand the burden of the war through the eyes of Tim O’Brien and his soldiers.
The novel, “The Things They Carried”, is about the experiences of Tim O’Brian and his fellow platoon members during their time fighting in the Vietnam War. They face much adversity that can only be encountered in the horrors of fighting a war. The men experience death of friends, civilians, enemies and at points loss of their rationale. In turn, the soldiers use a spectrum of methods to cope with the hardships of war, dark humor, daydreaming, and violent actions all allow an escape from the horrors of Vietnam that they experience most days.
The Things They Carried represents a compound documentary novel written by a Vietnam veteran, Tim O'Brien, in whose accounts on the Vietnam war one encounters graphical depictions of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Thus, the stories "Speaking of Courage," "The Man I Killed," "How to Tell a True War Story," "Enemies" and "Friends," "Stockings," and "The Sweetheart of The Song Tra Bong "all encompass various examples of PTSD.
person receiving the land, had to go through ceremony in which they would say that they
During World War II and the Holocaust, there was not only mistrust for the government but there was also plenty of mistrust for prior friends and neighbors. In the graphic novel, “Maus (Volume I and II) Vladek Spiegelman makes it very clear to his son, Artie, that one cannot count on their friends. He makes the point that in time of hardship, friends will abandon you quite quickly. Vladek says, “Friends? Your friends…if you lock them together in a room with no food for a week…then you could see what it is, friends! (Maus, VI. 5-6). Throughout the novel, we see examples of this gloomy point proven repeatedly.
In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, numerous themes are illustrated by the author. Through the portrayal of a number of characters, Tim O’Brien suggests that to adapt to Vietnam is not always more difficult than to revert back to the lives they once knew. Correspondingly the theme of change is omnipresent throughout the novel, specifically in the depiction of numerous characters.