More handpicked essays just for you.
The things carried by tim o'brian critical analysis
The things they carried tim o'brien rhetorical devices
The things they carried tim o'brien rhetorical devices
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Tim O’Brien wrote a story called The Things They Carried. This book is based on Tim’s reflection of his time serving in the Vietnam War. When Tim first heard about the war, he ran away, hoping he would not have to serve. During his stay there, Elroy, the owner of the Tip Top Lodge, and Tim go to the Canadian border where Tim wants to run away to. Instead of jumping out of the boat and swimming toward the border, Tim just cries. Several days of staying at the Tip Top Lodge, Tim finally decides to go to war. Knowing deep down inside that he was not brave enough for war, Tim decided to go anyway. Tim clearly states he was a coward, he went to war. Kiowa was a friend of Tim’s in the war. They fought with one another and always had each other's backs. Then one day something tragic happened. Kiowa suddenly dies in such a gruesome way. Although Kiowa did not think he would die this way. Kiowa died by drowning under all the muck of the sewage field. The muck was thick and heavy. If you were not paying attention, the sewage would just pull you under with no way to breathe. Before Kiowa’s death, Jimmy Cross, the Lieutenant, had a bad feeling in his gut while they were hiding out in the muck. Bowker, another one of Kiowa’s good friends during the war, watched Kiowa die. As Kiowa was screaming while getting sucked under the muck, Bowker grabbed hold of his boot. O’Brien was also part of Kiowa’s death. All of the men were affected greatly by this tragic incident. The hardest part of Kiowa’s death for O’Brien was trying to put it in
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.
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.
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.
Death, it cannot be prevented from happening, no matter how many bullets you carry, or how high you get. Kiowa, an Indian, a soldier, a warrior, he is just there, in Vietnam, at war, carrying on a tradition, carrying the distrusting feelings of the white man and most important carrying the pride of his people.
The death of Kiowa is the point in this story, and arguably the entire novel, where the true nature of war becomes evident. His death in any situation would have been tragic, and camping in that “shit field” alone would have been an emotionally scarring experience; however, that these events had to coincide in time only multiplies the gravity of the situation. Interestingly, every soldier has his own way of grappling with such overwhelming feelings of grief for his highly-esteemed comrade. Yet what every man has in common is that in the end he concludes that he alone is the one ultimately responsible for Kiowa’s death.
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.
"War is hell . . . war is mystery terror and adventure and courage and discovery and despair and . . . war is nasty (80)." When it all happened it was not like "a movie you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait (211)." O'Brien and the rest of the solders were just ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations. They needed to tell blatant lies" to "bring the body and soul back together (239)." They needed to eliminate the reality of death. As ordinary people they were not capable of dealing with the engulfing realities of death and war therefore they needed to create coping skills. O'Brien approaches the loss of his childhood friend, Linda, in the same way he approaches the loss of his comrades in the war as this is the only way he knows how to deal with death. A skill he learned, and needed, in the Vietnam War.
Most of this story revolves around experiences that Tim O’Brien has had. And he certainly has changed from the beginning of the story (speaking chronologically) where he was no more than a scared civilian, who would do anything to escape such a fate as the draft. He would eventually become the war-hardened slightly cocky veteran that he is now. But it is only through his experiences that he would become who he is today. Through all the things he has witnessed. Whether it be watching curt lemon be almost literally "blown to heaven" to having killed a man and making assumptions about who he truly was. He made not have been most affected by the war, but it was he who was described in the most detail, due to the fact that he was describing in first person
... 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.
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.
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.
Tim O’Brien is drafted one month after graduating from Macalester College to fight a war he hated. Tim O’Brien believed he was above the war, and as a result pursued the alternative of escaping across the border to Canada. This understandable act is what Tim O’Brien considers an embarrassment to himself, and to others. When Tim O’Brien finds accommodation on the border to Canada, he meets Elroy Berdahl who eventually influences Tim O’Brien, to change. Elroy Berdahl acts as a mentor to Tim, a figure that remains detached in the sense that he must provide enough support and understanding without being attached to the results.
...ust sees her dad’s strange actions. While someone that knows his story would see it as a final act of remembrance, putting Kiowa’s spirit and story to an end.
Kiowa is more sensible in realizing and understanding what Tim is experiencing. Tim: It’s a war. The guy wasn’t Heidi—he had a weapon, right? It’s a tough thing, for sure, but you got to cut out that staring” (126). He knows that what Tim is feeling is really hard for him to grasp because of the astonishment “Take it slow”.
The Things They Carried is a collection of stories about the Vietnam War that the author, Tim O’Brien, uses to convey his experiences and feelings about the war. The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O’Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. To O’Brien the novel is not only a compilation of stories, but also a release of the fears, sadness, and anger that he has felt because of the Vietnam War.