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The things they carried theme of death
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The title of the book itself couldn’t be more fitting. The Things They Carried is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Tim O'Brien about soldiers trying to live through the Vietnam War. These men deal with many struggles and hardships. Throughout this essay I will provide insight into three of the the numerous themes seen throughout the novel: burdens, truth, and death. The first theme is the most prevalent of them all. Literally, the things they carried. The soldiers carried physical burdens of course but they carried something even heavier. They carried internal burdens. Many burdens are obvious in every soldier in the story, such as guilt. The character that feels the most guilt is Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. “Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He blamed himself” (page 14). As the leader of the platoon, Jimmy Cross feels the weight brought by death of a soldier the closest. As the leader he believes it is his fault when a soldier dies. Cross falls into a depression due to the weight of the guilt he feels. Not all the weight may seem as heavy as guilt but there are many other burdens. Another being self image. Most of the soldiers carried this burden as well. The burden shows its great effect when Curt Lemon is about to be checked by the Dentist. Before the Dentist can even lay a finger on Lemon, he faints. This exposed a weak side in Lemon that he didn’t want anyone in the troop to see. Later that night Lemon went to the Dentist’s tent and demanded that his tooth be pulled due to a killer toothache. Even though the Dentist saw nothing wrong with the tooth, he pulled it out. Lemon was able to look like he never had a fear in front of the other soldiers (pronoun- he, antecedent- Lemon). Lemon was so desperate to save... ... middle of paper ... ... now. In the final chapter, the platoon searched through a burned down village and some of them came across some corpses. “Rat Kiley bent over the corpse. “Gimme five,” he said,” (page 149). Kiley gave the corpse a high five!?! The soldiers are no longer normal people. Their attitude toward death is literally considered insane. The characters react to death in a multitude of ways in the novel. O’Brien showed the impact war has on our minds with an extreme subject such as death. O’Brien wrote The Things They Carried layering themes on top of themes, but what makes it amazing is the way he presents these themes. Every single one intertwined with another. Burdens. Truth. Death. The soldiers carried their burdens and the death of their friends and enemies, and they live on as storytellers telling their war stories, but can there really be a true war story?
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.
Tina Chen’s critical essay provides information on how returning soldiers aren’t able to connect to society and the theme of alienation and displacement that O’Brien discussed in his stories. To explain, soldiers returning from war feel alienated because they cannot come to terms with what they saw and what they did in battle. Next, Chen discusses how O’Brien talks about soldiers reminiscing about home instead of focusing in the field and how, when something bad happens, it is because they weren’t focused on the field. Finally, when soldiers returned home they felt alienated from the country and
Some tangible things they carried with them were remind them of home and provide them with some luck, while others helped keep them alive during the war time. The intangible things the men carried helped the men be carried through the war and survive. Each man carried something different both mentally and physically. Tim O’Brien saw and experienced these men and what they had to go through during this time of war. The chapter “The Things They Carried” shapes each character into who he was during the war and shows us the reality of the Vietnam
In the book “The Things They Carried” four female characters played an important role in the lives of the men. Whether imaginary or not, they showed the power that women could have over men. Though it's unknown if the stories of these women are true or not, they still make an impact on the lives of the soldiers and the main narrator.
In the book “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien uses imagery, figurative language and repetition to convey his message. O’Brien’s purpose for story telling, is to clear his conscience of war and to tell the stories of soldiers who were forgotten by society. Many young men were sent to war, despite opposing it. They believed it was “wrong” to be sent to their deaths. Sadly, no one realizes a person’s significance until they die. Only remembering how they lived rather than acknowledging their existence when they were alive.
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 is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War, but in reality, the book centers around the relationships the men make, their connections to the world they left behind and the connections that they formed to Vietnam. The stories are not war stories, but stories about love, respect and the bonds made between men when they spend day after day fighting just to stay alive.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a very uniquely written book. This book is comprised of countless stories that, though are out of order, intertwine and capture the reader’s attention through the end of the novel. This book, which is more a collection of short stories rather than one story that has a beginning and an end, uses a format that will keep the reader coming back for more.
O'Brien's repeated use of the phrase "they carried" attempts to create a realization in the reader that soldiers in wars always carry some kind of weight; there is always some type of burden that servicemen and women will forever hold onto both throughout the war and long after it has finished. The specification of what the soldier bear shows that the heaviness is both physical and emotional and in most cases the concrete objects carried manifest into the continued emotional distress that lasts a lifetime (sentence about what they carry from novel) "The Things They Carried" emphasis this certain phrase in order for those that do not have the experience of going to understand the constant pressure of burdens they are under. O'Brien draws on
Tim O’Brien intended audience was the future generations and other veterans.He used shame, guilt and morality in his story the things they carried. ‘‘On occasion the war was like a ping pong ball.You could put a fancy spin on it, you could make it dance’’(O’Brien 32). In The novel the things they carried by Tim O'Brien the themes shame and guilt and morality are present by when he talks about all the different stories and things that happened to him through the years.How he has the guilt of surviving in war and his morality of learning to accept it.
In Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried,” imaginations can be both beneficial and corrosive. This novel consist of story truth and real truth. Throughout the novel, imagination plays a big role. Tim O’Brien wrote his book about the war mainly based on his memory of the war. He did not remember every details of the war, thus he made up some false details to the stories to make it seems more interesting. He wants the readers to be able to feel how he felt and understand how everything happened as he tells the story. He wants to provoke the emotional truth. O’Brien tries to prove that imaginations is not completely a bad thing and that it is also a good thing. O’Brien starts to create stories about what could have happen and what he could not do at the war in addition to the original war story. With the power of imaginations, O’Brien is able to talk about something that he could have done but did not do in his past. Imaginations helped him escape the reality. Imagination has the job of finding the real truth, attempting reconciliations and creating reality.
Literary Analysis Essay on The Things They Carried The book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is fiction and truth wound together to create a frustrating and addicting novel of fiction about the Vietnam war. O’Brien created stories by using his experiences during the Vietnam whether they are true stories or not is an unattainable knowledge for the reader, the only person of that knowledge is only O 'Brien himself. Through his writing he emphasized the the fact that you cannot perfectly recall the experiences of your past when your telling a story but the way it is told is “true sometime than the happening-truth(O’Brien 171) which helps give The Things They Carried depth beyond that of a “true”, true story. O’Brien has many characters in his book, some change throughout the book and others +are introduced briefly and change dramatically during their time in war and the transition to back home after the war.
Not just the physical burdens but emotional as well. In this book title the word ‘Things” is both literal and figurative at the same time. Whilst all of the men carry the physical burden of heavy equipment like O’Brien explained in one short story there is alot of weight in the gear and weapons like how all the men carried a nylon-covered steel flak jacket which weighed 6.7 pounds. But other than the physical burdens i think that the emotional burdens weigh considerably more than the physical weight of their gear. All the men in Cross’s platoon including himself all carry heavy loads of grief, love and fear. Henry Dobbins, for example, has his girlfriends pantyhose with him for the simple fact of missing and loving her and having that as a reminder. In the same way Jimmy Cross carries letters from his ex-girlfriend martha and a picture of her he got while he was in basic training beforehand. There are many recurring structures of this story but one that had stuck out to me would be, the men being lonely or isolated from the real world and the people they love. O’Brien has an advantage over isolation when he attempts to scare Jorgenson while he is on night duty. This emphasizes his intentions of revenge that he wants against him. O’Brien has a fear of being cut off from the outside world in Summary &
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.
“They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing— these were the intangibles…” (pg. 109). Although the men serving in the Vietnam War carried several pounds of gear and necessities on their bodies, there was something much heavier within their souls. The theme of “The Things They Carried,” is the burdensome mental weight of the war. This theme can be established by the guilt, fear, and the longing for home that is evident throughout the story.