Flawed Society In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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What constitutes a flawed society? - One factor that can constitute a flawed society is how society forces a few naive individual to go to war while everyone else effortlessly benefits. O’Brien writes, “He would have been taught that to defend the land was a man's highest duty and highest privilege. He had accepted this. It was never open to question. Secretly, though, it also frightened him. He was not a fighter. His health was poor, his body small and frail” (125). This quote demonstrates how society is corrupt because an innocent man who is afraid of war is being taught to fight no matter what. Furthermore, the quote shows the rapacity of society, for the life of naive individual is being sacrificed for a lowly cause. The greedy actions of the society make it flawed because the people within the society only care for what is best for them; the loss of lives will not stop the society from achieving what is. How does one survive in a flawed society? …show more content…

When O’Brien receives the draft notice to enter the war he considers running away, “I began thinking seriously about Canada. The border lay a few hundred miles north, an eight-hour drive. Both my conscience and my instincts were telling me to make a break for it, just take off and run like hell and never stop” (36). This quote proves that one alternative to coping to a flawed society is to leave and run because O’Brien considers fleeing to Canada in order to avoid being shipped to war. At this point in the novel O’Brien is young and he does not want to enter a war because he does not believe it is for a good cause and the only way out for him is to leave. Even though O'Brien reaches the border to Canada he decides not to leave, however his action demonstrate one alternative to surviving a flawed

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