Mitchell Sanders In The Things They Carried

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In Tim O’Brien’s book, “The Things They Carried”, Mitchell Sanders is one of the most likeable soldiers throughout the book. He is kind and dedicated, and because of his good qualities, he is developed as a father figure. Sanders plays many important roles, and this is just one of the many reasons the author introduced him in the story.
Sanders is intelligent. He is the RTO, otherwise known as the Radio Telephone Operator, so communication is important to him. He has years of soldierly experience, and incorporates that knowledge into stories that he shares with the men. In the book, when lieutenant Jimmy Cross leads the men into a field of feces, Kiowa meets his death when the field explodes with mortars. Later on, Sanders blames Cross for his failure of being a leader. Sanders is not afraid of putting himself up higher than lieutenant Jimmy Cross, he is a confident man, and will step in to finish a job when he needs to. …show more content…

We quickly learn that the author developed Sanders as a storyteller, he gives the men in the platoon advice and lessons based on stories from his own experiences. During the book, Rat Kiley tells a long story about his first mission in the mountains of Vietnam and adds details to make it sound true. Sanders scolds Kiley for his unnecessary opinions that he added to the story, and explains to him that a true war story has meaning, it has morals. Sanders is disappointed, he tells the men that storytelling is an art, it needs to flow, and it needs to have rhythm. Sanders is stubbornly obsessive when it comes to knowing and understanding the moral of a story. He believes that understanding the moral of a story or incident is the best way to learn from

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