Change In The Things They Carried

1623 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Overall meaning of the things they carried essay

Change In The Things They Carried a war novel by Tim O'Brien, we are told many short stories compiled to make a whole. I want to emphasis on the importance of the chapter "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong". In this chapter we are introduced to the character Mary Anne. She shows the changing power of Vietnam, that a sweet innocent young girl can come into this land and be forever consumed by her surroundings. The speaker show us this through character action, character description, dialogue and metaphor; this enhances the literary work by showing us that the soldiers will always be a part of Vietnam no matter how hard they try to get away from it. Mary Anne was a young sweet innocent girl unaffected by the war at first. The speaker shows us with character description from what she was wearing when she arrived. "This cute blonde just a kid, just barely out of high school…white culottes and this sexy pink sweater."(O'Brien 90) Her "pink sweater" is a symbol for innocence, the color pink is associated with innocence; "barely out of high school" can also imply her innocence. The end of high school is the beginning of a new world for most. Thus meaning that she has her whole life in front of her. That she is just starting life. In this next quote you will see that she had the rest of her life planned out or so she thought. "Mary Anne Bell and Mark Fossie had been sweethearts since grammar school. From the sixth grade on they had known for a fact that they would get married…that was the plan. They were very much in love, full of dreams, and in the ordinary flow of their lives the whole scenario might well have come true."(94) The speaker placed this quote to foreshadow Mary Anne's change. "Ordinary flow of their lives the whole sc... ... middle of paper ... ... truth. This story enhances the literary work for it shows what can happen if you embrace a culture while surrounded by others who are just simply living off the land not being courteous to those who live on it. Her love for this land changed her forever, She is not the same sweet innocent Mary Anne who came off of that helicopter, and she is now one with Vietnam. This is a metaphor for what took place in the lives of soldiers, they go there expecting to just "hump" along but get consumed by the land. It forever changes them so that they will never be the same again. There minds are forever warped, they will go in as one person and leave another. The speaker uses Mary Anne as an accelerated version of a soldier's life to make a dramatic effect. She is to show how much a man changes after war, no matter how hard they try to deny it. The war has became a part of them.

Show More
Related

  • Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong Analysis

    461 Words  | 1 Pages

    Rat Kiely continues to tell a story about how Mary Anne had an affect on everyone. One day as Mary Anne searches the unknown of Vietnam, she goes missing. Her boyfriend, Mark Fossie is desperate and stunned and decides to go look for her. Suddenly, Mary Anne would show up at base and go missing again. When Mark Fossie goes looking for his girlfriend once again, he sees her. Rat Kiley explains, “‘But the story did not end there. If you believes the greenies, Rat said, Mary Anne was still out there in the dark… Not quite, but almost. She had crossed to the other side. She was part of the land. She was wearing her culottes her pink sweater, and a necklace of human tongues. She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill’” (page 110). Here, Rat Kiely tells the readers that everyone had to adapt to the environment to survive, and Mary Anne has done just that. In the beginning of the chapter, Kiely talks about how Mary Anne portrayed the perfect girlfriend, sweet and innocent. But the quote displays the change that occurred to Mary Anne. It is implied early on that Mary Anne represents a common soldier which would mean that every soldier had gone through a drastic change to make them who they are. Through the dynamic character of Mary Anne, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, demonstrated to

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried Rhetorical Analysis Essay

    793 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

    1720 Words  | 4 Pages

    Tim O’Brien is a very gifted author, but he is also a veteran of the Vietnam War and fought with the United States in that controversial war. Tim O’Brien was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1968. He served as an infantryman, and obtained the rank of sergeant and won a Purple Heart after being wounded by shrapnel. He was discharged from the Vietnam War in 1970. I believe that O’Brien’s own images and past experiences he encountered in the Vietnam War gave him inspiration to write the story “The Things They Carried.” O’Brien tells the story in third person narrative form about Lt. Jimmy Cross and his platoon of young American men in the Vietnam War. In “The Things They Carried” we can see differences and similarities between the characters by the things they hold close to them.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried Character Analysis Essay

    1067 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the short story, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, each soldier carries many items during times of war and strife, but each necessity differs. This short story depicts what each soldier carries mentally, physically, and emotionally on his shoulders as long, fatiguing weeks wain on during the Vietnam War. Author Tim O’Brien is a Vietnam War veteran, an author, the narrator, and a teacher. The main character, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, is a Vietnam War soldier who is away at war fighting a mind battle about a woman he left behind in New Jersey because he is sick with love while trying to fulfill his duties as a soldier to keep America free. Tim O’Brien depicts in “The Things They Carried” a troubled man who also shoulders the burden of guilt when he loses one of his men to an ambush.

    Read More

  • Coping Mechanisms Used for Survival in The Things They Carried

    920 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Distortion of Truth in Tim O’Brien's The Things They Carried

    743 Words  | 2 Pages

    Some authors choose to write stories and novels specifically to evoke certain emotions from their readers as opposed to writing it for just a visual presentation. In order to do this, they occasionally stretch the truth and “distort” the event that actually occurred. The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is a compilation of short stories about the Vietnam War with distortion being a key element in each of them.

    Read More

  • “The Turning Point”: The Effects of the Vietnam War According to The Things They Carried

    799 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • the things they carried

    1085 Words  | 3 Pages

    The things they carried, by Tim O'Brien.      "Oh man, you fuckin' trashed the fucker. You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like fuckin' Shredded Wheat." I chose to start off my essay with this particular extract from the book because I think that it very much represents the story in itself. Azar said this, after Tim (supposedly) killed a Vietnamese soldier with a hand grenade. It shows that in times of war, how callous men can become. However, callousness varies, whether they choose to be apathetic, like Tim shows us after his grenade episode.

    Read More

  • The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

    1894 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mary Anne did not truly become ‘dark’, because to her this is not a story about war; this is a story about a woman attempting to overcome gender roles and the inability of men to accept it. When Mary Anne begins interacting with the land and the material culture of war we are introduced to her curious nature. She would “listen carefully” (91) and was intrigued by the land and its mystery. Vietnam was like Elroy Berdahl to her in the beginning in that it did not speak, it did not judge, it was simply there. Vietnam saved Mary Anne’s life.

    Read More

  • Symbolism in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried

    979 Words  | 2 Pages

    Written by author Tim O’Brien after his own experience in Vietnam, “The Things They Carried” is a short story that introduces the reader to the experiences of soldiers away at war. O’Brien uses potent metaphors with a third person narrator to shape each character. In doing so, the reader is able to sympathize with the internal and external struggles the men endure. These symbolic comparisons often give even the smallest details great literary weight, due to their dual meanings. The symbolism in “The Things They Carried” guides the reader through the complex development of characters by establishing their humanity during the inhumane circumstance of war, articulating what the men need for emotional and spiritual survival, and by revealing the character’s psychological burdens.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien

    1168 Words  | 3 Pages

    Tim O’Brien wrote the novel The Things They Carried in 1990, twenty years after the war in Vietnam.In the novel,Obrien takes us through the life of many soliders by telling stories that do not go in chronical order. In doing so we get to see the physical and mental things the soldiers carry throughout the war in Vietnam.Yet the novel is more than just a description of a particular war. In the things they carried Tim O’Brien develops the characters in the book slowly, to show the gradual effect war has on a person. O’Brien shows this by exploring the life of Henry Dobbins, and Norman Bowker.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in The Things They Carried

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mary Anne is initially introduced to the audience, narrated by Rat Kiley, as an innocent and naïve young woman present in Vietnam solely to visit her boyfriend, Mark Fossie. She arrives in “white culottes” and a “sexy pink sweater” (86), and is deemed by the other soldiers as no more than a happy distraction for her man. As Mary Anne settles in though, her abundant curiosity of Vietnam and the war heighten, and she soon enough possesses as much interest in the war as many of the men. Forward, Mary Anne’s transformation into a soldier begins as she leaves her sweet femininity behind. No longer caring for her vanity, she falls “into the habits of the bush. No cosmetics, no fingernail filing. She stopped wearing jewelry, [and] cut her hair short” (94). Mary Anne’s lost femininity is also evident when she handles powerful rifles like the M-16. Not only does the weapon literally scream out masculi...

    Read More

  • Psychoanalytic Perspective In The Things They Carried

    1396 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien offers readers very unique and interesting view of the Vietnam War and the mentality of a soldier.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried

    877 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien the author tells about his experiences in the Vietnam war by telling various war stories. The quote, "It has been said of war that it is a world where the past has a strong grip on the present, where machines seemed sometimes to have more will power than me, where nice boys (girls) were attracted to them, where bodies ruptured and burned and stand, where the evil thing trying to kill you could look disconnecting human and where except in your imagination it was impossible to be heroic." relates to each of his stories.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried - Themes

    972 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about Change In The Things They Carried

Open Document